


Reunion

by cellorocket



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drama, F/M, Lots of it, Romance, Shenko - Freeform, Unplanned Pregnancy, an exercise of dubious success, but really, rewriting my first mass effect fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:59:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 50,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellorocket/pseuds/cellorocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This isn't it for us,' Kaidan said fiercely. 'After this is over, no matter what happens, we'll find each other, okay?" With the Reapers defeated and the galaxy in turmoil, Shepard and Kaidan are stranded; Kaidan on a distant planet, Shepard on Earth. When the stakes rise for them both, they must overcome the odds and find a way to reunite. Part 1 of a Mass Effect Epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In the end, Shepard remembered the beginning.

Granted, there were enough beginnings with Kaidan to fill the pages of an ancient book, the kind printed on onion-thin paper, precious and light under her fingers. In the last moments before the conflagration engulfed her she was visited by them all: what it was like to kiss him that first time on the Citadel, the way her breath caught when he first reached for her hand in a crowded place. The first meal they shared, the first fight. The first time they made love.

She believed that there couldn't be anything as sweet as a beginning in wartime, where every moment was tempered by impermanence and loss. Yet now she realized that she stood at the brink of one. As the last shot rippled up her arms and shattered the console, and the flames of the Crucible billowed toward her, melting armor into flesh, burning away her hair, her hands, her weary bones, she realized:

This was the first and last time she will ever have told a lie to Kaidan Alenko.

* * *

 

_Shepard couldn't sleep._

_In the endless hours of the sleep cycle, the silence deafened her. So compensating for the quiet, her mind would dredge up the litany of horrors that lived in her memory, submerged only through incredible force of will. Here, in the quiet, they resurfaced with a vengeance; Mordin smiling sadly at her through the glass of the lift, Thane's last breath settling in his chest, Ashley's voice crackling on the comm – through interference, or tears. The billions who had died already, the sheer weight of them pressing down on her._

_And the little boy._

_She didn't know him, not like you knew people. Yet she remembered him. Brown hair, blue eyes, round cheeks. Small hands holding a model ship, like the ones she collected. Bright laughter, bright eyes. The burn of the Reaper's gaze. Pieces of him raining down on Vancouver Bay._

_And she would lurch awake, clutching a claw-like hand to her chest, gasping desperately for breath. The sheets would cling to her skin, drenched in cold sweat. Her heart would punch a furious rhythm against her bone basket chest. And only exhaustion that approached terminal would soothe her to sleep again, days later._

_It wasn't like she could choose not to sleep just to avoid the nightmares, even if it were possible. She was Commander Shepard, the tip of the spear. The sword at the head of the fleet. When she faltered, so did the spirits of every Alliance serviceman, every civilian on a burned out broken world, every person who had lost something to the Reapers. She didn't have room for this kind of weakness. Especially not tonight._

_In a few hours she would strap on her armor and check her guns. She would coordinate strategy for the assault on the Illusive Man's base with a similarly exhausted Admiral Hackett. She would infiltrate the base and engage the enemy. She would kill, because she it was her job. She was good at it._

_Shepard stared at the datapad in her hands until the words blurred together in a hazy mix of greys and blues. Six hours to go. She'd been about to settle in when a voice on the other side of her door startled her so badly that the datapad leapt out of her hands, clattering loudly on the floor._

_"Shepard?" called Kaidan. "Can I come in?"_

_She let out a tense breath and tossed the datapad on her desk. "It's open."_

_It was a fact of her life as a soldier that she could love Kaidan for so long and yet his presence would still feel so new, so impermanent. They'd known and loved each other for three years, yet the sight of him standing in her doorway – all straight lines, straight shoulders, tired lines etched under his eyes – could still make her heart falter._

_"Can't sleep?" he asked her._

_She attempted to smile. "I'll sleep when I'm dead."_

_It was the wrong thing to say. "Please don't joke about that," he said quietly, and she felt like throwing herself into the drive core out of shame, like she'd broken something precious and irreplaceable._

_"I'm sorry," she managed. "I'm just tired."_

_He held up two tumblers and a bottle of her favorite whiskey with a hopeful smile. "Share a drink with me, then?"_

_She didn't really feel like drinking. "I have work to do -"_

_"It's just a drink," he said. "I'm guessing you could use the break."_

_Shepard sighed. It was still so new between them, and his ability to read her like a book still came as a wonderful and irritating surprise. "All right," she said, and it was only after he passed her a glass did she realize that she was grinning too._

_They drank in companionable silence. She crossed her legs and he rested one hand on her thigh, rubbing small circles there with his thumb. They listened to each other breathe, which was something close to music for soldiers. And he was steady as solid ground beneath her feet; an altogether strange and wonderful concept for a girl who had grown to adulthood without ever setting foot on Earth. She smiled again; less a rueful grin and more one that came from a place of deep happiness._

_"What?" he asked when he caught her staring._

_"Nothing. Just … I'm glad you're here," she said. She set aside her glass and took his hand, pressed her fingers into the callused skin of his palm, the feathered lines that branched and crossed like rivers._

_"Figured you'd be lonely," he said. "Working too hard, sleeping too little."_

_"Just like you?"_

_"Heh. Maybe."_

_He pulled her into his side, so that they were separate only by their clothes, and she lay her head on his chest, her ear pressed to the space just over his heart. She would give anything to hear that sound for the rest of her life – to wake up in bed, in Vancouver perhaps, where the sky was free of gunfire, and wrap herself around him, listening to that steady heart beat on._

_But this wasn't Vancouver, and the skies above Earth were thick with the Reapers, who cut through stone and flesh alike. This steady man in her arms could stumble on the battlefield, and she would have to watch as he burned to ash in the Reaper's gaze. Unexpected tears rushed to her eyes, and she quickly blinked them away before Kaidan could notice._

_He noticed anyway. "What is it?" he asked her quietly._

_She shook her head. "It's nothing."_

_"It's not nothing," he insisted. "You're crying."_

_"I have something in my eye."_

_"Shepard," he said, leaving the rest of the rebuke unspoken._

_It wasn't fair to leave him in the dark; he knew she was upset anyway, so there was no point in lying. She took a slow breath and let it out through her nose. "I was just thinking about you," she admitted. "And the Reapers."_

_She didn't have to say anything else. He understood immediately because he knew the same fear she did – at one point, he'd lived it. He'd already survived the loss of her._

_"It could be over so easily," she whispered. "All of this. You're here right now, and tomorrow you could be gone. And … I don't think I could do it. God, if anyone heard me say this they'd hate me, because I'm Shepard; I'm supposed to have my shit together. But if you died and I was left behind, I don't think I could … I couldn't do what you did, Kaidan."_

_He was quiet for a moment. She always loved how thoughtful he was, how he measured his words like beads in an abacus, parsing this way and that toward the perfect expression. "I think you could."_

_"I'm telling you I couldn't. Put on my uniform, shake hands, shoot who I'm supposed to. I couldn't do it."_

_"No one thinks they can," he said. "Hell; right before the end, I thought it'd kill me. There was one night in Chicago, I was watching you sleeping. You said my name, I think, or reached for me. You were so beautiful, and two things occurred to me right then; that I wanted to marry you, and that I wouldn't be able to keep living if you were gone. And then … you were. And I was still here. And I just kept going because I didn't have a choice. It'll be the same for you too."_

_She bit her lip. "You trying to make your peace here?"_

_"Shepard," he said, like a sigh. "I don't plan on going anywhere. I just … promise me you'll keep going, and I'll be right there at your side for as long as I'm alive."_

_He was so serious, and he looked at her as if she was precious. She was so used to being looked at as if she is the unmovable stone of an idol, the unwavering steel of a Commander. In that moment Kaidan looked at her as if she was a woman, the full measure of it, and she loved him more than she knew how to express._

_"I'm going to hold you to that," she whispered before she kissed him._

_It was a sweet, slow kiss at first. He tasted of whiskey and smelled like soap, like spice. He cupped her cheek as if he was afraid to hold her too tightly. It was so new between them, but it was familiar too; she could sense when comfort became desire, when affection gave way to need. His breathing changed and his lips grew urgent against hers, and those steady solid hands held tightly._

_This was new as well; not intimacy, but desperation tempered by fear. He pulled her shirt over her head and flung it away, his hands chasing trails over her skin, tattooing them there. She kissed every inch of him, every line, every scar – the curling hairs at his chest and stomach, the tender skin of his neck, paper thin behind his ear. And he met this with his own desperation – he rushed to remove her bra with so much force that the clasp broke under his hands, the pieces clattering to the floor. In another place and time she might have teased him for ruining her clothes, but here she only wanted him to undress her faster, to spread her out on the bed and take her quickly._

_And in this, he obeyed. He pushed when she pulled, and they fell together, tangled like the roots of a great tree, drinking sunlight. He pushed her legs apart and knelt between them, holding her there with his burning, steady hands. But before he entered her, he paused as he had done so many times before, some in this cabin, on this very bed. As he drank in the sight of her beneath him, so did she; Kaidan balanced above, the banding muscles of his arms, the low light catching grey at his temples, his swollen erection brushing against her thigh. His eyes, dark with need._

_He plunged into her with one powerful stroke, and she felt him moan into the curve of her neck. And this – oh god, this. There were not enough words for this. She ached as he moved above her, into her, as he held her tightly enough to bruise. She watched him through half-lidded eyes, because even in here she could not trust the world enough to risk closing them. And she was strung taut, strung along, thrumming like a plucked string under his hands. She was drinking him in, pressing him close enough to mark his presence on her very bones, so that as long as she lived he would be there, living in the tender space between her ribs. When he came, she was there with him in that high place, and for the space of that sunlight moment she believed that they would never have to come down._

_After, he pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her hair. She watched his chest rise and fall in time with her breathing, and the sight of it was so tender. It was only after a long silence when she noticed his eyes were bright._

_"What is it?" she asked him, brushing her thumb across his cheek._

_"This isn't it for us," he said fiercely. "Okay? After this is over, we're going to have that life we wanted."_

_"What life?" she asked him, trying to make him smile._

_And he did, though it was a broken, half-formed thing. "A house. Kids. Each other."_

_And she saw what he saw in that brief, Reaper-less moment; a home somewhere, a retirement well earned. Children, maybe with her red hair or his beautiful brown eyes. Many long years of peace stretching onward. A chance to grow old together. She didn't want to cry but something about his words stripped her raw._

_"After this is over, no matter what happens, we'll find each other, okay?" he told her._

_"No matter what happens," she echoed with his intensity, and the words were the truest she'd ever spoken._

* * *

 

Shepard was first aware of the creak of straining metal; the Citadel twisting in the void. There was an echo of gunfire and a labored, scraping sound that echoed in her ears, through her body. She realized slowly that the scraping was her own labored breath.

There was pain like she'd never felt before. A howling, burning agony, reverberating through her bones like a struck gong, and yet her machine heart beat on. The weight of the Citadel rested on her broken chest, and that heart refused to stop.

She should be dead, but she was not.

She wrenched open her eyes with colossal effort, blinking to reorient herself. She saw blasted stone and twisted metal, and above her the void was littered with the detritus of battle, the corpses of ships and Reapers alike. There were no streaks of gunfire dotting the darkened sky, and she knew. It was over.

The Reapers were gone.

It was strange, to suddenly be relieved of her purpose. One would certainly resurface, she supposed. But for now, there was nothing. There was a sense of victory, yes; slowly sinking in. There was relief.

She remembered Kaidan and the Normandy. She remembered it streaking through the blast-scarred sky, slowly, leaving ripples in its wake. She remembered Kaidan's face, his eyes wide and pleading. She remembered telling him she loved him before dashing away toward the beam.

The Normandy. The Normandy was her purpose now. She chased away all speculation that the ship might have met its end in the course of the battle, incinerating everyone aboard, thrown outward in chunks of metal and flesh. She ignored the thought of it being forever out of her grasp. She would find the Normandy if it killed her, and she would find Kaidan.

She let her head thud back into the rubble. Breathing was painful and her head spun, turning the sky above her head into a smear of darkness and starlight, diffuse as oil on a canvas.

She drifted. She resurfaced from unconsciousness at odd intervals, gasping a little as her heart faltered. She looked up, through the glass above her head, but the patterns of the stars changed too randomly to be marked. She lost all conception of time and as it passed, even the pain began to fade.

She realized she was dying.

It was a nearly involuntary reaction to fight death. She clung to consciousness like a drowning man clings to detritus floating on the sea. She clung to her memories and they sustained her. Kaidan, holding her hand. Kaidan, his glowing barrier rippling against enemy fire. Kaidan, his lips on hers.

"No matter what happens, after this is over we find each other, okay?" he said in her memories. Or were they memories?

That was his voice, at the edge of hearing. That flash of blue was his armor, bright against the darkness of the ruined Citadel, the drifting wrecks of starships that spun above her head. He began as a blur in her sight, but as he approached the sight of him grew clearer, more distinct; the flickering blue of his biotics rippling off his skin, his smile, bright as any star.

"Shepard," he breathed. And though her arms were broken and her chest was crushed and each breath was like pushing a great stone up a hill, she pulled herself upright to meet him. She could breathe easier, now that he was here. His touch was light, his hands like cool water on her burning brow.

"Kaidan," she choked.

He smiled, so wide. "Come with me."

"I can't," she cried. There were slabs of concrete on her arms and legs, wires and chunks of metal sitting on her straining chest, making each breath painful and slow. "I can't move."

"You don't have to," he said. Was she dreaming, or did the shape of him flicker slightly? "We're going home."

She thought of her mother's ship; blown into component particles by slavers three years ago. "Where's home?"

"With me," he said, and he took her hand. And then she saw what he saw; the setting sun glinting on the surface of Vancouver Bay, his parents standing in front of their home, waving at her with smiles on their faces. She saw the orchards, breathed the smell of fresh fruit, autumn light, cold beer. She felt his lips pressing at her temple as wind from the bay played with her hair. She saw the boy from her dreams, running circles around the trees with his toy ship in his hands, and his laughter reached a deep place in her.

This was a dream, the dream of the dying. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the image was gone.

"No matter what happens," Kaidan reminded her. She reached for him but he slipped through her fingers, and she realized he wasn't really there. Just a shadow, a memory. The last gasp of a dying woman.

She was tired. She was so tired. There were flashes in her mind, bright streaks of light, incomprehensible. The burn of the Reaper's gaze? The bite of gunfire in the sky? Biotic wisps curling over Kaidan's hands. His eyes – the only color she'd ever really seen. She was a liar - she'd been a liar that night on the Normandy, in his arms. She'd promised something she had no power to give.

_What do you need me to do?_

_Get up and live._

_I can't … I can't._

_Why?_

_I'm so tired._

_So rest. Then get up and live._

This time when she closed her eyes, they did not open again.

* * *

 

The Alliance mobilized a search for Shepard within hours of the ceasefire. The Reapers had no sooner dropped out of the sky when Admiral Hackett rounded up every surviving serviceman and biotic and sent them to the ruins of the Citadel.

Jack was first among them. The second the order had come in on the comm, she'd gathered her surviving students and reported for duty, probably for the first time in her life. She saw the crumbling wreck high above the world and knew that Shepard was alive up there, probably hurt, possibly dying. She knew that she wouldn't rest until she'd found that stupid son of a bitch.

They took to the search desperately at first, but as minutes turned to hours, and hours into days with still no sign, the rescuers slowly came to terms with the fact that their hero was probably long dead. But Jack, being Jack, refused to entertain this possibility. She searched without break, without food. She searched stupidly, blindly.

Biotics moved precarious piles of rubble as carefully as they could. Breathing masks were procured and passed around. Jack refused one, even though she'd started to go light headed. Shepard had no mask. She needed to believe someone could survive up here without one.

"Think she's a goner," Prangley had said to Rodriguez on the third day.

"Shut the fuck up!" Rodriguez hissed, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. "She'll hear you! You want her to freak out?"

"It's going to happen sooner or later," Prangley said, shrugging. "Nobody could live up here that long. And she probably got hurt pretty bad in the blast. I'd be surprised if we even found a body."

"Jesus," Rodriguez muttered. "She's going to punch your brains in."

"Why? It's not my fault she's dead!" Prangley said.

Any other day Jack would have ripped their heads off and worn their intestines as a hat. But any other day the closest thing she'd ever had to a friend wasn't broken up on some death trap, blasted to pieces and probably close to death. She'd save the beatdown for later, when Shepard was found and safe.

She pulled rubble aside with cracked, bleeding hands and hated herself. It was common state for Jack, who had learned to turn self-hatred outward, convert it into fuel, use it to drive herself to insane lengths. But this time she felt exhausted and furious, a breath away from falling completely apart.

She should have been here. The end had come and Shepard had been alone. After everything she'd done for Jack – after all the bullshit and trust, after the kindness and understanding – Jack had let her charge ahead on this stupid mission alone. She'd done what she always hated; she'd abandoned someone who needed her.

As far as she was concerned, Shepard couldn't be dead, because if she was Jack was going to have to live with the fact that she'd been no better than the regular assholes who took and took and gave nothing back, and she couldn't stand the thought. So she threw aside massive piles of detritus and tried to ignore the weakness coiling in her limbs, the hunger scraping in her gut.

She hadn't slept in days, hadn't eaten in almost as long. Her biotics were weak and unpredictable; she lifted a chunk of fuselage and almost dropped it on the heads of a few servicemen working a level below her. There were rumors that soon Admiral Hackett would call off the search, and send in the cleanup crew. Work would resume at a slower pace. No need to hurry for the dead.

But Shepard wasn't dead. She couldn't be. She was here, she was close. She'd sit up and grin and clap Jack on the shoulder. Took you long enough, she'd say. Get me out of here, why don't you? And Jack would say yes ma'am, asshole ma'am, and they'd laugh, and maybe after that they'd get a beer and throw the bottles off an overpass.

And then – and then - she heard it. A scraping gasp a few feet to her left, so soft that she could almost convince herself it didn't exist. She crawled on her hands and knees to the source of the noise, pulling aside chunks of blast-scored metal. She didn't care that her arms were weak and her vision was going, and the world seemed to come at her in odd fits and spurts. Jack only knew the sound could be breathing, and it could belong to Shepard.

She wrenched aside the last pile and stared at the broken figure lying on its back. It was more a charred piece of steak than a person – there was not one piece of skin untouched by burns and soot. Its eyes were crusted shut with blood, which had probably come from a wound on its forehead. Its arms and legs hung at odd angles. Its hair had been burned away.

It wasn't Shepard, it couldn't be, because Shepard was alive and this thing was dead. Furious tears burned in Jack's eyes, and she would have screamed if the thing at her feet didn't gasp again.

And she knew, even before she felt for a pulse, even before she heard the weak beating of her heart.

"Someone get the medics!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, so loudly the other servicemen in her vicinity yelped in surprise. "Shepard's alive!"

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Kaidan watched it happened from high above._

_They sprinted full tilt toward the beam. Blasts shook the wasted earth, and the single bright column of the beam shivered in his sight as he stumbled. In this world of slate and grey, he saw a flash of red – the red of Shepard's hair, the red of the Reaper's gaze, braiding together._

_In the end, he didn't even have time to make a sound. One moment he watched Shepard turn to look at him over her shoulder, and the next he was sailing high above her. For a paradoxical, thoughtless second he believed that he wouldn't come down._

_Only flashes now. Striking the ground with all imaginable violence, Vega coming down hard at his side. A ringing in his skull. Pain – diffuse, hard to pin down. A feedback scream echoing through the crumbling ruin of London._

_And then Shepard was at his side, and the pain faded._

_He didn't realize what Shepard meant to do, not even when he saw her fingers cover her ear, her lips moving soundlessly. In only moments the Normandy swooped down on them like an avenging angel, blowing back pieces of rubble and detritus, and still it did not connect for him._

_He saw her reach for him, her gauntleted hand crossing the breach. He remembered that hand as it had been only hours before – as it had been only days ago. Bare, the smooth surface of her nails tracing patterns up his side. A flash of her smile._

_She did not smile in this place. A heavy trickle of blood leaked from her hairline into her eyes, which were dark with fear, bruised. Her skin, already so pale at the best of times, took the shade of sun-bleached bone._

_"Come on, Major," she said, but on her voice the title carried none of its expected weight. Instead, he thought it could have been his name. Might have been, in another place. If they were different._

_She slung his arm around her shoulders and pulled him into her side. And he thought that he'd like to stay there, pressed side to side, breathing in time. She did not stumble when he did as she half dragged him to the Normandy, the hatch lowering before them. He thought of Virmire, when she slung him over her shoulder in a fireman's lift. The same thing had happened on Mars, but he didn't remember._

_And still it didn't occur to him that she meant to leave him behind. Not until she passed him off to James. Those dark eyes, like the sea of his youth. "Shepard," he managed, though his tongue felt thick and useless. "Don't."_

_It didn't occur to ask her to come with him. Shepard was meant for the beam. He was meant to be at her side._

_"Go on, Kaidan," she said. Waving him on._

_His head throbbed and the world shook, but he dug his heels into the ramp and stood his ground. "No."_

_"You're hurt. Let Chakwas fix you up." Now she tried to cajole, injecting her tone with false brightness. But it didn't reach her eyes – it never reached her eyes._

_He abandoned the circular dance with which they were so familiar. "Don't leave me behind."_

_A blast a few kilometers away shook the earth, followed by a screech that raised the fine hairs on his neck. Husks, maybe. She had heard him, though, and he watched something break in her. "It won't be for long," she said, trying to smile. "I'll see you on the other side."_

_"You've said that before." Though the world beyond the two of them blurred in pain she remained in his sight, as fixed and solid as always._

_"And I always come through, don't I?"_

_They couldn't kiss here, not with James holding him upright, not while he struggled in vain to break out of the solider's grasp. He knew in a dim part of his mind that he was wounded, and that he would be of no help where Shepard was going, what she meant to do. But beyond that, he knew that his only place was at her side._

_Shepard drew close and brought her gauntleted hand to his cheek. The rough fabric scraped at his raw skin, yet it was still a better feeling than all things warm and comfortable and safe. She drew close, her eyes so wide and desperate, so painful, so beautiful. She opened her mouth to speak just as the Reapers let loose a blast that might have cracked the earth in half, yet still he recognized the shape of what she tried to say. He held it close._

_He knew goodbyes. How many had he and Shepard been forced to exchange?_

_Then she was running toward the beam and the ramp was closing, and his field of vision grew smaller and smaller until it was only a slim window to that grey world. But before it closed he saw her look over her shoulder and meet his gaze. She was Lot's wife, looking back. She would not turn to a pillar of salt, but one of ash._

* * *

 

James dealt with pain by burying it. It was a useful coping tactic for a soldier, who needed to be able to keep his head in a shitstorm, to keep fighting when he could be seconds away from death. He pushed it all away, so that it was like it filled the mind of another person. He had no room for it in his own head.

He deposited Kaidan on a gurney in the medbay and skirted Chakwas, slipping away before she could notice that he was wounded too. He wasn't really, not like Kaidan. He wasn't leaving anyone behind. Hard to do that when you didn't have anyone or anything. Most days he convinced himself this was for the best – he was a career military man with aspirations. He need to stay mobile, unattached. Attachments were weak spots in your armor, and they came in the shape of little kids who'd look up to you, or women you'd learn to need. He was done with it.

Space bound combat was difficult for James because he had no place, no task. He was usually instructed to mind his business at his post and hope they didn't get disintegrated. Today, however, he made his way to the CIC and stood at Traynor's shoulder, watching her fingers fly over the keyboard, over letters that blurred and blended together.

Joker sat at the helm, piloting the Normandy around blasts that could rip gaping holes in the hull and vent them all into space. A half-dozen servicemen sat at their consoles on the bridge and calculated each firing solution with pin-point accuracy. They were flagging, though – the battle had raged on without signs of stopping. People were getting tired. Mistakes were made.

"What are you doing?" Traynor whispered through her teeth. He saw a vein leaping at her temple.

He shrugged dimly. He'd seen his share of battles in his short life, yet somehow this was different. Everything had become strange and dreamlike, yet still sharp enough to hurt. "I just want to know if we get hit," he said simply, and it was the truth. He didn't want to be fiddling with one of his guns and watch the cargo bay erupt into Reaper fire. He didn't want to watch Esteban get sucked out of a breach in the hull without knowing about it first.

Traynor nodded and said no more.

James lost track of time. He watched the shapes on Traynor's console without really registering them. He heard people speak without understanding the words. Instead, it was as if the only language he understood was the concussive rattle of gunfire, splattering on the ship's auditory emulation systems. It always came as a surprise to remember that without it, space would be silent. He'd watch the Alliance frigates and turian cruisers splinter apart, and they wouldn't make a sound.

The order came after an eternity of watching and waiting. Hackett's voice filled the CIC, breathless with exhaustion and panic: "Shepard's activated the Crucible. Retreat." And James saw it all happen on everyone's faces, their thoughts hurtling toward a similar conclusion, like an odd symphony of extremes. Garrus, at Joker's shoulder, urging him to obey. Joker, hesitating; his face twisting with guilt. EDI, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Brace for FTL," Joker said reluctantly, and James understood. If Kaidan hadn't been laid up in the medbay, they might have hovered over Earth until the blast from the Crucible disintegrated them. As for Joker, he'd lifted Shepard out of more shit situations than he could count, but now he had to be thinking of the one time he hadn't been able to save Shepard, and how similar it was to this moment.

They hurtled through space, leaping through relay after relay, and all the while the blast chased them, drawing closer, snapping at their heels. Consoles fried and the ship wavered, and EDI – implacable EDI – made a sound James had never heard before; not the synthetic voice that somehow could inflect, but a pop and a hiss, a grinding screech. Joker only knew his desperation to avoid the blast, so he did not notice when EDI gave another popping hiss and slumped over in her seat, tendrils of gently coiling smoke rising from the seams of her body.

The blast overtook them and fried what was left of propulsion. The Normandy froze, like a runner stumbling over a crack in the pavement, frozen in the air, suspended over the ground. Then came the fall. They plunged through atmosphere, the hull frying, hissing. Every console on the ship flashed and blinked into darkness. A muscle twitched in Joker's jaw, and James heard his fingers snapping like twigs as he pulled hard on the yaw. There were screams, coming from far away. Traynor said a prayer.

James didn't remember the impact. He didn't remember the crew slowly picking themselves off the deck, checking for injuries, broken bones. He didn't remember the flash of sunlight streaming down from the windows, and how odd it was for something like sunlight to exist after fighting for his life in a grey world. All he would remember was the sudden broken scream coming from the cockpit as Joker gathered EDI up in his shattered arms, howling her name over and over. He only knew that EDI did not respond.

* * *

 

The next hours passed in sickening lurches, screeching to a halt on the oddest details. But there was one constant: no matter where Shepard's body was moved, Jack was at her side with hackles raise. From the ruins of the Citadel, they brought her to a shuttle with a complement of field medics. They struggled mightily over Shepard's broken body, hooking her up to machines that hissed and screeched like a wounded beast. They barked at Jack to stay back, and she would have punched them through the hull of the shuttle if that wouldn't have vented them all into space. She hadn't slept in days. Her temper, already a force to be reckoned with, now operated via hair-trigger.

The shuttle brought them to Admiral Hackett's ship next. The medics wheeled Shepard's gurney through the halls to the medbay. She made to follow them but they held out their hands, lips moving without sound.

"Let me through," Jack hissed. "Let me through, god damn it, let me through!" Biotics curled over her thrumming flesh and her heart pounded out a wartime drumbeat, and she advanced; half asleep, half insane, snapping with rage. She didn't know these people. They could hurt Shepard. Why wouldn't they?

The turn of events became sickeningly familiar in the span of a heartbeat. It was Cerberus all over again: disappearing behind medbay doors, watching her mother shrink through the window, and the slow realization that overtook her four-year-old mind; she wasn't coming back.

Sleeplessness and fear coagulated into wide-eyed panic. She was shoving people, screaming, hands curled into claws. Her heart was galumphing like a crazed bird, slamming itself against a window over and over until fluttering brokenly to the ground.

And then she felt a hand on her shoulder, lightly enough so that in her half-crazed state she wouldn't perceive it as a threat. She spun and came face to face with Admiral Hackett. He didn't reprimand or signal to one of the medics to pump her full of sedatives. He regarded her like one bereaved warrior regards another, with eyes full to the brim with grim understanding. In that odd moment, she knew him and he knew her. Slowly, she relaxed, the biotics that wisped over her skin winking out.

"She's in good hands," he said to her, nodding.

"Sir, she needs to go to the brig," one of the medics hissed. "Before she does anything."

"She's not going to do anything," said Hackett, regarding Jack with oddly familiar blue eyes.

And in that way, the matter was settled. It was true; Jack wasn't going to do anything. Maybe she might have another day, in another life, and maybe he might have thrown her in the brig, or barred her from entering his ship altogether, but today was different. Today the Reapers had been defeated. Today Shepard had been blown half to hell, barely alive, sprawled on a gurney as the medics cut the burned armor off her body.

Time lurched forward. Jack slipped in and out consciousness, but instead of dreams she saw the events of the last days play out behind her eyelids, flickering like an old film reel. They were waiting silently for the call to come from Earth. They were waiting for word that a hospital was ready for the wounded. And every minute that passed blurred with the last, so she felt oddly disconnected to her body.

Hackett slipped in and out of her line of vision, his hoarse voice threading through her waking dreams. Understandable. He had a ship to run. He couldn't stand unbroken vigil over Shepard, though she got the feeling he wanted to. She got a lot of odd feelings watching him, feeling something like suspicion curl in her stomach. He was too involved for an Admiral and a Commander.

Another lurch, another jump. Time fogging. One moment she was standing outside the medbay on Hackett's ship, and the next she was half-jogging alongside Shepard's gurney as they wheeled it through the doors of a crumbling hospital. Was this Chicago or Paris? Seattle or Vancouver? She hadn't slept in five days. She'd forgotten how to read.

She watched Shepard disappear behind another set of doors. She stood there as nurses and doctors rushed around her, like water rushing around a stone sunk in a riverbed. "Where are they taking her?" she slurred to the first nurse she saw.

"She's in good hands," said the nurse. Or was it Hackett? Perception ran in loops and curls; everything seemed to happen a dozen times over. She nodded and lowered her exhausted body on a bench in the waiting room. Her bones ached. She felt like she hadn't rested in years. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe each day filled the space of a year. Or maybe none of this was real.

She only meant to close her eyes for a moment, but her body had other ideas.

Instead, Jack slept the sleep of the dead. She did not dream.

* * *

 

_Shepard dreams. She dreams of Chicago, those first days spent wrapped around Kaidan, wrapped around each other. She dreams of fingers entwined. She dreams of the warmth of him, the steady flame, the passion and tenderness that live coiled in his hands. She dreams of his eyes, the way the light catches them when he smiles, the way they cloud over when he's thoughtful. She dreams of that time when things were certain._

_Shepard flags down a taxi and hurtles inside, and he clambers after her. She's barely said the words 'The Drake, please' before she roughly pulls his face to hers and kisses him so hard that for a moment she could think of nothing – she could only become aware of the sensation of it, one that she's gone so long without. He knocks off her cap and winds his hands through her hair, holding her close, savoring her, and her heart thrills._

_They don't watch the city move beyond the cab – the lights bright as stars, the strange discordant music of car horns and people mingling in a way that she's never heard, the reflection of the moon unbroken on the lake. She isn't aware of it, but at the same time it infuses this moment with a strange, otherworldly quality; and it is easy to think they had stopped being the selves they were out of necessity and let those skins fall away, until only the truth remains. The truth is that she loves him, and she could kiss him like this for a thousand years._

_The cabbie pulls around and waits a full ten seconds before clearing his throat rudely. "Twenty-two credits," he says. Shepard passes him a credit chit before throwing open the door and stumbling out in the street, tossing her duffel over her shoulder and grabbing him by the shirt._

_They are in the lobby before he speaks again. "We forgot your hat," he says, pulling her close, breathing the words on her neck._

_It's suddenly so stupid and hilarious that she can't keep from giggling. "Woops."_

_And the strangeness of the moment – the time spent holding themselves back during the search for Saren, the sudden freedom - makes her feel odd and punch-drunk. He snorts too, and before either of them know it they are giggling like stupid children, half-stumbling to the concierge's desk and making far too much noise for respectable servicemen._

_"Reservation for Alenko, please," he says, pressing his lips together to keep from laughing._

_The concierge looks at them with benevolent amusement. "Newlyweds?" he asks._

_"What?" they ask in unison._

_"It's pretty common," the concierge explains. "We see a lot of servicemen elope or marry in Chicago, spend a few days here."_

_Shepard bursts into inappropriate laughter, burying her face into Kaidan's neck as he hands his credit chit over, desperately struggling to keep a straight face. It is so surreal, so ridiculous; almost as if the people they speak to are insubstantial, and not even their disapproval can touch them._

_They stumble into the elevator, giggling like drunkards, drunk on each other. As soon as the elevator doors closes, Shepard pulls him close once again, and they kiss as the elevator bears them upward, giving her the odd sensation that they are no longer connected to the earth, that they float, perhaps, above the city._

_She moans under his mouth when he slides his hands up her arms, holding her shoulders, savoring. There is so much of him that she'd never had the chance to touch, and so much of him that she'd needed on those long days aboard the ship – halfway between destinations, the thought of him two decks away driving her out of her mind with want. And now he is here – so close to that they'd nearly ceased being individuals._

_They somehow make it to their room despite their carrying on, even earning a few disapproving clucks from an elderly couple as Kaidan fumbles with the card key. Slowly, she wraps herself around him as he struggles with the door, her breath on his ear, her hands sliding lower and lower. He almost chokes when she squeezes his butt, her grin delightfully coy._

_"Feeling brave, Shepard?" he growls._

_"Ooh. Shaking in my boots, over here."_

_The door flies open, and he drags her into the room, crushing his mouth to hers. They haven't even dropped their bags before they begin pulling at clothes, ripping, tearing, with desire that had become so screamingly desperate that it is a physical pain not to be naked, with him hilt deep, his hands everywhere at once._

_He shucks her sweatshirt and fumbles with the buckle of her pants before giving up entirely and pulling at it with so much force that the metal bends and breaks. Her laugher is breathless, panting – she's hardly even registered the fact that he's destroyed her only belt, and now they'll have to go find a new one. She takes his force as a challenge. She yanks his shirt over his head and flings it across the dark room, her cold fingers skimming up his chest. He sucks in a hard breath and trembles, and she knows the pleasure of it so acutely it is as if he touches her and not the other way around._

_She should be slow. She should savor this like he deserves to be savored; pulled down gently, worshiped, each kiss a prayer. But she is beyond even the thought of control – the act of waiting has stripped them bare. He unbuckles her bra and slides his hands over the soft weight of her breasts, and she gasps, twists under his hands, under the fierce pleasure of it. She hears a hard moan come from somewhere deep in him, and before either of them knew it, he's pushed her into the wall, covering her body with kisses, tasting her, devouring her._

_"Kaidan . . ." she breathes, arching under his hands, fumbling blindly for his pants. When he is free of them, he captures her hands and pins them to the wall, so that she is bare and vulnerable, the dim light of the moon dappling on her body, casting drifting patterns. It is nearly pain to be touched by him now, and so there they wait, suspended by their mutual desire._

_"Kaidan," she moans, squirming._

_"Shh."_

_"Don't make me break out of this."_

_He kisses her again, his teeth grazing her lips. He does not relinquish her hands, "Try it," he breathes._

_She could kick his ass across the battlefield when she chose. Now her body glows with biotic power, and she sees herself as he sees her in that moment; she is less a woman and more an apparition – the very image of those spirits that were said to taunt men into madness, merely by virtue of their heartbreaking beauty. She breaks free of his grip and forces his hands down, but even then she can't resist, and she sees clearly in every line of his face that she torments him just as much as he torments her; mutual apparitions, then._

_She pushes him backwards and together they collapse onto the bed. And this is what she'd thought of – those endless days aboard the Normandy, their hands tied behind their backs by duty and the regs and principle and a thousand other things that meant less than nothing now that they were here, and there was only the feel of skin pressed to skin, her breasts skimming his chest as she bends low and kisses him deeply._

_She sees that he can endure no more taunting, no more half measures. He pins her in one smooth motion, and this time she does not fight. Her hands creep lower, curling around his thighs, pulling him closer until they are only separate by quivering inches, centimeters._

_"What are you waiting for?" she gasps, throwing her head back in the pillow so that her hair splayed about like a fiery halo._

_But he looks down at her with something odd in his eyes. He keeps them wide, as if afraid she'll vanish the minute he turns away._

_"You're so beautiful," he breathes._

_"That's what's getting your way?" she cranes up to look at him, into his oddly bright eyes._

_"Just . . . committing you to memory."_

_"You planning on losing me anytime soon?"_

_"Not if I can help it."_

_She could tell he hadn't meant for the words to be so fervent, but they come out like a vow that he will etch into his skin, a vow that he will keep for the rest of his natural life. And it resonates in her – humor fades into wonder, fades into something so vast that she will exhaust the capabilities of language before she finds the words for it._

_She places both hands on either side of his face and guides him down until their lips are only a breath apart. She kisses him like a promise, then, and he can tolerate the inches that separate them no longer. He plunges inside her with a cry, the sound muffling against her lips. And it is beyond her ability to describe._

_What they had shared on Ilos is a pale shadow compared to this. He slides his hand under her buttocks and drives deeper, moaning when she arches under him. The way he feels, oh god, the way his hands move over every inch that he can reach, holding her tighter, pressing her closer. She meets him line for line, bearing him along, crying out when he finds the right angle, the one that makes her shudder and cry out, curling into him as if she could no longer bear any distance between them._

_And she will spend her life learning these places – these tender secrets that he buries beneath his skin. He brings his lips to her breast as he plunges deeper, moving up and out, faster than she'd planned, faster than she wanted – already the climax upon him, when he'd only just begun. But how were they supposed to resist this – when she pulls him deeper, when she grasps him as if she could not imagine a moment when they weren't joined in this way?_

_He comes to the sound of her moan, as if it was a command he obeyed._

_After, they do not dress. She pulls him down into the softness of the bed and drapes her naked self around him, curling tenderly into his side. She can feel his heart beating against the wall of his chest – the exact center, where she would choose to live if she was free to make such a choice._


	3. Chapter 3

_Kaidan wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his side, his hand resting on her hip, the solid weight of it more reassuring than she knew how to articulate. Beneath their window the sounds of the city rose and fell like the cresting of a great wave – bleats of car horns, voices floating from far away. Soon Kaidan's breathing deepened and his hand relaxed, drifting to her side; heartbeats away from a dream._

_She propped herself up on her elbow. "You awake?"_

_Kaidan stirred beside her, his fingers skimming up the bare expanse of her back, raising gooseflesh. "Mm," he sighed, a low sound rumbling deep in his chest. She pressed a hand there, the better to savor his heartbeat._

_"I can't believe you're falling asleep," she said, grinning. "All that anticipation and you conk out in the first hour here."_

_"Anticipation is tiring, you know," he said without opening his eyes, though his lips twitched against a grin._

_"How's that?"_

_"You never wanted something so bad you felt like you could sleep for a thousand years once you got it?"_

_"Maybe if I felt like whatever I got was a done deal," Shepard said, inching away. "This is anything but a done deal, mister."_

_"Sure it is."_

_"Want to put money on that?"_

_Finally his eyes opened, catching the muted light of the city below them, filtered through window slats. "No," he said finally, and it struck her at that moment that he might regret the joke, fearing that it'd give her the wrong idea, for there was fear in his expression, and self-condemnation. "Shepard, I—"_

_"Shush," she said, curling up against him until they were pressed skin to skin, molded to one another. "Go to sleep."_

_He obeyed, but not before leaning down and bringing his lips to hers, gently as one can be with something so new. His fingers wound through her hair as he breathed, and she felt herself giving into him, as if this kiss was a language all its own, spun through breath and the subtle meaning lips make when joined – he the question, she the answer._

_It did not take him long to descend completely into sleep, his body going slack around hers, his breathing soft and slow. But her thoughts spun at a frantic pace. She watched him with something much like fear._

_She watched him in the fullness of the moment, in all its fantastic heartbreaking beauty, and knew that it could not last. She knew a fear that had settled around her heart the day she got the call from Command, informing her of her mother's death. It was a fear that promised the loss of good things, and how inevitable it was._

* * *

 

Kaidan stepped through the Normandy's hatch and into the sunlight, raising his hand to shade his sensitive eyes. James didn't bother. Instead, he stared directly into the bright landscape, as if he couldn't believe it was real.

Kaidan was still somewhat foggy from his injuries – a concussion, Chakwas had informed him, along with a fairly impressive collection of bangs and scrapes – but he was conscious enough for a few stark facts to make themselves plain. He was alive, and so was most of the crew. They had crashed on an unknown planet, an unknown distance from Earth. Comms were down, along with most of the Normandy's primary systems. The Crucible had fired some kind of beam, and when it had caught up with them it damaged the Normandy and destroyed EDI.

Beyond that was only speculation. Had the Crucible destroyed the Reapers as well? Or were they still embroiled in bitter conflict above the skies of Earth? If the Reapers had been destroyed, was there anything left for the survivors? Were there any other survivors, aside from the crew of the Normandy? Had Anderson survived? Had Coats?

Had Shepard?

A shrieking call echoed through the lush forest below the Normandy's crash site, and a flock of strange birds shot toward the sky. Kaidan watched them go, struggling to swallow the lump in his throat.

He thought of Shepard as she had been that final night, before the end. He thought of her as she'd been through this whole war. Exhausted and grim. Unsmiling. The bright, sweetly funny woman from those early days of the SR-1 had seemed very far away. Almost unreachable, except at night when they were alone, entwined under the sheets. She would soften as he kissed her, and sometimes she would even smile.

It was possible she was dead. Not possible – it was probable. The beam that had destroyed their ship could have easily destroyed her too. And he wouldn't know until they reached Earth. If, Kaidan corrected himself silently. If, if, if. His life had suddenly boiled down to a few awful contingencies.

At that moment, Kaidan was faced with a choice. Without Shepard he was now the acting Captain of the Normandy, and the crew would look to him for leadership and guidance. He could let himself be defeated by grim speculation, by the thought of a long buried corpse waiting for him on Earth, or indeed, the thought of a permanent home on this distant planet. Or he could steel himself against these grey conjectures and hope instead.

He was a pragmatic man, but ultimately there was a part of him untouched by all that he'd seen and experienced, all that had shaped him to expect the worst. He thought of Shepard laughing that night in Chicago, her bright smile, the lights of the city dancing on the surface of Lake Michigan behind her, and in that moment he knew.

Shepard was alive. And he would make it home.

"Come on," he said to James. "We have a lot of work to do."

* * *

 

After a week of staking out the hospital where Shepard was, Jack decided she'd live a long and thankful life if she never saw the inside of a fucking waiting room again. She hated waiting and she hated rooms, so it figured she'd utterly despise this unholy union - a room designed solely for waiting.

It was a depressing state of affairs. Despite the feverish, near inhuman efforts of the surviving hospital staff, the building itself was still a few crumbling wards away from achieving total ruin. The walls were blast scored and scarred, and while the corpses that had littered the halls had been cleared away, there was still the cloying stench of dead husk stuck in the air.

But worst of all was this very waiting room, where Jack had maintained a stubborn vigil for the last week. It wasn't like she had any other place to go, anyway. She helped with the cleanup and looked after her students, but it became clear pretty quick that outside of that, there wasn't much else for her to do but wait to se Shepard.

The waiting room had the misfortune of being located right next to the nurses' station, and a stricter bunch of buzzkills had never lived. They yelled at her when she tried to smoke. They glared when she munched on jerky and left the wrappers piled at her feet like leaves. They howled like hounds of hell when she propped her filthy boots on the coffee table and got dirt on the depressing array of magazines, the most recent of which being at least two years old.

(Jack wasn't sure she wanted to live in a world where tabloids survived the Reapers and good women died slowly in hospital rooms.)

All in all, she could take the obnoxious nurses and the depressing magazines and the stink of husk thick in the stale air. She could endure the waiting and the wondering, and the fear growing so sharp in her gut that it felt like she'd swallowed broken glass. But the icing on this shit sandwich was the painting.

She fucking hated that painting.

It was one of those cheesy, sickening paintings you see at the dentist's, or on the peeling walls of a motel. It cheerily depicted a smiling blonde woman with a little blonde girl in her arms, pressed cheek to cheek. They laughed, like the plain fact that they were mother and child was the best thing and it didn't get any better than that. The girl couldn't have been more than four years old.

It wasn't even a really good painting. It didn't suggest a perspective; it forced one on you. It told you straight up that blonde women and their blonde children were happy because they existed and belonged to each other.

It made her think of Shepard, broken up in her hospital bed, hooked to machines that did the living for her, and how it was nearly a week later and she still hadn't gotten the okay from the asshole nurses to go see her. It made her think of the time Shepard told Jack about her dead mom, the way her eyes had gone cold and her mouth had trembled at the corners before she swallowed it and forced a grin. It made her think of her own mom: dead, probably, and a coward. She'd given up her only kid. She'd thrown Jack away like a piece of trash, and Cerberus had swiped her up, used her and broken her and made her into their image.

And there it was; the dark seed of her hatred, and how something as stupid as a painting could ignite it. There weren't loving mothers and happy children. There were assholes and the unlucky assholes they spawned. And if there were happy mothers and children, they were long dead. Their bodies burned with the husks. The stink of their rot was the only thing that remained.

Jack wiped at her burning eyes and swallowed. She was a tough bitch. She could crush a man's skull blindfolded from across the room. She didn't cry at stupid manipulative paintings. She didn't cry period.

And so the infinite waiting marched on. Jack might have liked it better if she was alone in her little waiting corner of hell, but of course that was too much to ask. She knew Admiral Hackett had a lot on his plate (seeing as she was pretty sure he was overseeing the entire rebuilding effort on Earth), but he still managed to check on Shepard's progress a few times a day – once in the morning, once during the lunch hour, and once at night, when the night shift nurses switched in.

Jack had watched the Admiral with distaste and suspicion. She'd dismissed the thought in the direct aftermath of the battle, but now that things were calmer and her head was on straight, it seemed especially strange to her that an Admiral should expend so much effort for a Commander. Shepard wasn't the only officer laid up in this particular hospital, since it was connected to the bombed out Alliance HQ in Vancouver. But she was pretty sure Hackett didn't check on them.

Okay, maybe it was because Shepard was Shepard, and every shithead alive had her to thank. But intuition was a funny thing. Intuition told Jack it was something else.

Hackett wasn't the only one to interrupt her vigil. Miranda came around the fifth day, looking exhausted and thin, but otherwise so perfectly put together that Jack wanted to haul off and punch her in the face. Not even a biotic punch either. Nobody had any business looking so good after a war. Kasumi came too, though when the nurses told her no one was allowed to see Shepard yet, she'd attempted to sneak through using her tactical cloak. Jack had nearly knocked her out in rage – she'd just gotten here, and Jack had been waiting for days! – but she needn't have bothered getting mad at all. Shepard's room was wired with a pretty strong anti-stealth ward, and after it shorted out Kasumi's cloak, security had showed up and unceremoniously escorted her out.

Even shitty old Zaeed had shown up. He looked around, bothered the nurses for an update on Shepard, then left. She thought that would be the end of that, but to her surprised Zaeed showed up every single day after that.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she finally asked him.

"What does it look like?" he barked. "Checking on the Commander."

He wasn't even ashamed to admit it. Sometimes Jack really hated that old asshole.

She expected him to leave, but to her surprise he dropped into a rickety seat across from her, crossed his arms over his barrel chest, and shut his eyes. Two minutes later he was snoring. Like he hadn't slept in a few decades. Though after looking a little more closely, Jack realized that might be an actual possibility. She'd lived with the old shithead for a few months on the Normandy, and she'd never actually seen him sleep before. He was always up, sitting in his corner smoking his cigars, telling his shitty stories to anyone who would listen.

So it was kind of like being alone again. Jack would take what she could get.

Of course, the peace and quiet didn't last. First Miranda showed up right after dinner, as prim and put together as ever. She noted Zaeed with a decorous little sniff before parking right next to the nurses' station, crossing her legs far more elegantly that should be allowed, or even possible for humans. The night shift nurses descended, and like clockwork Hackett was next, thudding up the stairs to the waiting room and straightening his uniform before taking a dignified seat a few chairs away from Zaeed. Today he had a box tucked under his arm.

Jack hated the waiting room, but she liked being alone. And though these assholes made a show of checking in, they always left in the end. Now they sat around like vultures, studiously ignoring each other. Jack could swallow her irritation no longer. She turned to Miranda. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Miranda did not rise to the bait, though Zaeed lurched awake at the sound of Jack's voice. "The nurses said we can see Shepard today."

Fuck. How had she forgotten? It was probably the influence of that fucking painting, staring down at them all like some kind of benevolent deity of mothers and children.

"Those nurses are liars," Jack said, gesturing dismissively. "Better not waste your time."

Zaeed snorted and fished a cigarette out of his pockets, clamping it between his lips as he struck a light. "Nice try."

She hated these fucking people more than she could say; even the Admiral, who said nothing and did not otherwise react to the situation. She snatched the cigarette out of Zaeed's mouth and stubbed it out on the arm of his chair. "No smoking," she snapped.

"You better have another, or I'm going to get pissed."

She threw a loose cigarette at him. "Smoke it outside. If you get us kicked out, I'll skin you alive and make a fucking coat out of it."

"I'd like to see you try."

Things might have escalated if the nurse hadn't chosen that moment to barge in. "Admiral Hackett?" she said, peering up from her datapad into the waiting room. Her uniform was smudged with blood, and a tendril of pale hair had pulled free from her messy bun, curling on her cheek.

The Admiral stood slowly, straightening his filthy uniform and tucking that stupid box under his arm. "Here."

The nurse looked him up and down before nodding once, curtly. "This way."

Jack watched them go, too surprised to say anything. Fast on the heels of that, of course, was rage. Admiral fucking Hackett wasn't the only person who wanted to know what the fuck was up with Shepard. Admiral jackass Hackett wasn't the only one with a stake in that busted up broken woman just down the hall.

Somehow, Miranda seemed to have expected this, if her smug knowing expression was any indication. "Calm down," she said before Jack could speak. "We're next."

"You know that for sure, huh?" Jack bit back.

"It's next of kin first," Miranda said, as if Jack was stupid. "Don't you know that?"

Jack thought of Kaidan, probably blasted into component atoms by the Reapers. She didn't like the Major so much – didn't really know him – but she knew Shepard loved that asshole, and because of that the thought of him being dead was actually kind of painful. "Shepard doesn't have any next of kin," she snapped. "Don't you know that?"

If anything, Miranda's expression grew even more self-satisfied. "Hm. Perhaps you're right," she said, like the idea of Jack being right about anything was ridiculous.

It wasn't a long wait, but it felt like another year passed before the nurse returned, datapad in hand. "I assume the rest of you are here to see Commander Shepard, correct?" she said, looking up only briefly before parsing data again.

"That's right," said Miranda.

The nurse shrugged. "This way."

She led them through the dingy hallway at a brisk pace. Jack struggled to match it, taking two steps for every one of Miranda's and the nurse's. She was tired; that was it. She tried to convince herself that it wasn't fear the size of the sun lodged in her throat, making it hard to breathe or speak or walk or do anything that involved being alive.

But that fear remained, and like many things she found ugly and stupid about life, she was forced to acknowledge it. She was afraid she'd walk into Shepard's room after days of waiting and worrying and see that burnt up piece of gristle she'd found on the Citadel, a few heartbeats away from dying. She was afraid the days of silence on the doctors' part meant that nothing could be done, and now they were just keeping her comfortable until she finally expired. She was afraid she'd look at Shepard and not recognize her at all, and because of that Shepard truly would be lost.

Jack hesitated over the threshold of Shepard's room, swallowing the thick lump in her throat. She steeled herself, like she would for a fight. She prepared for the worst, and with a huff, forced herself to take that final step.

It was better than she feared, but worse than she hoped. The figure in that hospital bed was obviously Shepard, familiar and wonderful and still alive, still breathing with odd determination for a comatose woman. They'd washed her body and set the bones. They'd cut her burnt hair away, so that only two inches remained, bright against her pale skin like firelight, like the glare of the sun in that cold, grey room. And the block of fear in Jack's throat lessened somewhat. She was still hurt pretty fucking bad, and from the look of her it would be a long road to the Shepard everyone knew and loved. But it was possible. There was a chance, and Jack would cling that slim chance like it was the only thing left in the world.

Long after the others had left, after Miranda pulled the nurse into the hallway and badgered her in low, urgent tones, Jack pulled up an empty chair and sat next to the bed, so that her knees banged the sideboard. She looked around, and after determining no one could see her, she folded Shepard's ice-cold hand in hers.

"You better hurry up and get better," she whispered. "Things suck without you around."

* * *

 

Half the galaxy away, Kaidan held a plate bearing Shepard's name in front of the memorial wall, surrounded by the rest of the Normandy's crew. He ran his fingers over her name, hesitating. He remembered her smile, her voice, the bruised look in her eyes that only surfaced when she thought she was alone. He remembered her touch, her lips mouthing the words 'I love you'.

He tucked the plate under his arm and strode away, leaving the crew to stare at the empty place on the memorial wall where her name should have gone.

 


	4. Chapter 4

"God," Kaidan muttered, wiping his brow with the back of his gauntleted hand. A bead of sweat teased the end of his nose, dangling precariously before breaking free. The planet they were stranded on was unfortunately tropical, with long day cycles and temperamental weather. Though he, James, and Garrus had only been exploring the immediate vicinity of their crash site for the better part of an hour, he was already drenched in sweat, to the degree that he suspected removing his armor would create a small flood.

"You're going to make me blush, Major," James piped up behind him. "James works just fine."

Despite himself, Kaidan snorted. If it wasn't for James and Garrus' lighthearted banter, he suspected these days would be much more difficult.

As the ranking officer on the Normandy, many of Shepard's previous duties now fell to Kaidan. This included emergency procedure. In the last three weeks he had coordinated the repair efforts (which were extensive) and set the shifts. He personally inventoried the supplies on the ship, calculating that they would last sixteen months before starvation with no supplements from the planet they had landed on.

This grim reality necessitated a sweep of the surrounding jungles for anything that could be used for sustenance or repairs. The state of the long range scanners dictated the sweeps be done on foot.

Kaidan had considered searching the jungles when they first landed, but those early days had been too chaotic to justify the choice. The Normandy had been a few systems short of total failure, and EDI's death had hit morale hard (to say nothing of Joker, who did not leave the AI core for days). They avoided mention of Shepard when Kaidan was around, but he heard whispers regardless; the crew didn't believe that she lived. They'd seen the blast engulf the Citadel before they fled, and they knew her actions were the cause and likely end.

Kaidan didn't think he was a natural leader, not like Shepard, so he didn't expect the crew to rally around him like they rallied around Shepard during the war. There was something about her that made you believe every word she said. Maybe the way she managed to be both earnest and grim, passionate and determined, in the way her voice would rise and fall to the tenor of what she felt; a book so easily read. Kaidan was steady and dutiful at the best of times, and in his opinion that was a poor substitute. But he was an old hand at grief. He knew that busy hands lessened the burden.

In the end he needn't have worried. The crew took to his command without hesitation, and in fact as the days passed he saw that their spirits lifted somewhat. Songs were sung. People laughed in corridors. And the day they broke down the spare Kodiak for repairs, he heard a beautiful thing: Shepard's name, spoken in a tone of hope.

On those days it was easier to be hopeful himself.

He wasn't specifically required to, as the standing protocol for stranding was to repair and rendezvous (or failing that, dig in and wait for rescue), but he'd pulled Garrus and Tali aside in that first day of repairs.

"We're likely going to attempt to return to Sol first, depending on our position," he said cautiously. "This means you might not see your homes for a while."

They'd exchanged a glance. "That's sort of what we expected," Garrus had said, shrugging. "Way I figure it, we all want to find Shepard if she's alive. And this is an Alliance ship. We got to get you guys home."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Garrus had said, and he clapped Kaidan on the shoulder. "My feelings won't be hurt if we don't make any special stops for little old me."

"Rannoch will be there for a long time," Tali supplied. "There is more to do now."

He'd known Tali and Garrus were close to Shepard – hell, they'd all taken Saren down more than three years ago – but he'd never fully realized the depth of their loyalty. He struggled to speak for a moment, working his suddenly tight throat. "I appreciate it," he said before making a hasty retreat.

All in all, he should be happy. Proud. He  _was_ proud. The crew pulled together; even Joker did his best to chip in, though grief and his disease made it difficult at the best of times. And at first, he was okay. It was easy to hope. The Reapers were probably gone. The memory of her was still close, so recent, and he had endured much worse.

But fear struck anyway. Fear knew the weak spots, the tender places. It played those like a virtuoso.

Kaidan thought of his parents, and the silence that surrounded them. The complete lack of word. He thought of the last day he'd seen them, and how average that day had been: he and his father had sat in the living room, drinking beer and watching the news. His mother had orchestrated a conversation between the three of them just like always, peppering each statement with liberal use of 'don't you think, David?' and 'right, Kaidan?' until she'd thrown up her hands and bent over the stove, grumbling about being caught between two rockheads. And he and his father had looked at each other and smiled. Quiet was their way. It'd taken a lifetime to figure that out.

He thought of Shepard- in fact, he doubted he could stop even if he wanted to. He descended into productivity. Busy hands made for a calm mind, and he needed that calm. He needed to keep away from the sickened speculation that beckoned whenever he stopped for just a moment, overcome by memories.

They were there, looming around corners, waiting to strike. He'd see Shepard striding down the hallway, datapad in hand. He'd see her at the mess, smirking at whatever funny thing Joker had said. He'd remember her in the war room, looking as if she'd never smiled in her life. He'd remember her pacing in her quarters with lips pressed together, the sound of her hoarse voice. How tired she was, at the end. How it seemed as if she hadn't slept in years.

Traynor had informed him that due to his status as ranking officer, he was now authorized to use her old quarters. That tentative hope he felt wasn't so strong that it could withstand the sudden wave of surprise and revulsion he felt. Those were her quarters, her things. It was strange to invade them as if she was already gone, as if she was beyond their reach.

Traynor had shrugged. "You don't have to," she backtracked, alarmed by the look on his face. "It would make things more official, that's all."

After some thought, he'd agreed on those terms. He wouldn't confess that part of him longed to be there, in the last place they'd been truly together before the end. He wouldn't confess that he needed to be near at least a trace of her presence, her papers strewn across the desk, her scent still in the sheets.

"Head out of the clouds, Major!" called Garrus. "We got something here."

He shook away thoughts of Shepard and scanned the jungle. He had work to do. It was no good mooning over her like she was already gone. She was alive until proven otherwise.

"Coming," he said, and he plunged into the thick foliage.

* * *

The last month wasn't the worst of Jack's life, but that wasn't saying much, as her life had been a grim parade of abuse, rape, and unspeakable violence. Barring all that, it sure hadn't been any fucking picnic either.

She waited as patiently as was possible for Shepard to improve, to sit up in her bed crane around with that look – that arched brow, like whatever shit was going down didn't even begin to scuff her boots – and start pulling at all the wires and tubes, anxious to get the hell out of the hospital. The Shepard she knew hated being stuck on her ass more than anything. She'd grumbled uncharitably when Chakwas insisted on a checkup. She'd pushed through her own injuries in favor of her job, almost to the point of hopeless stupidity. Like the attention bothered her, even something as necessary as medical attention. But that was Shepard. That was her way.

Not this.

Weeks passed, and Shepard did not regain consciousness. The bruises faded, the lacerations healed, and all the casts were removed except for the one on her right leg, which according to the nurses would require probably another month of healing and regrowth accelerants.

Jack had eked out a tenuous agreement with the nurses - she'd stay on her best behavior and the nurses wouldn't kick her foul-mouthed ass out– so though she wanted nothing more than to plant her ass in front of their station and demand why the fuck they weren't trying to actually revive Shepard, she kept her mouth shut. She made do, though a lot of times she suspected swallowing her temper so much was giving her an ulcer.

The good thing about a post war Alliance town was that distracting herself with work was pretty easy. She showed up at the bombed out HQ when she felt like it, and to her grudging relief Admiral fucking Hackett always had something for her to do. She lifted slabs of plate and concrete and steel into place with her students. She cleared away rubble and helped burn the bodies (being that she had a pretty strong stomach for the work, which was a lot more than she could say for Princess Prangley, who had to go puke his guts out every couple of hours).

To her surprise, Hackett even set her up with one of the new apartments adjacent to the HQ. He'd said something about keeping her on as an instructor, though that was pretty much moot at the moment. Aside from her old students, there wasn't much of a need for training new biotics, not when everyone was more concerned with finding their families and starting up civilization again. Jack figured a crafty old bastard like Hackett knew it too, and was giving her a place to live for some other reason. Pity, probably, which did not improve her opinion of the man. He could take his pity and choke on it, for all she cared. But then again, she'd gotten pretty sick of sleeping under benches.

So she was adjusting. She was trying. She swallowed her problems with everything and sucked it up. Took it on the chin. She'd have won a gold in the Taking It On the Chin Olympics, the way she performed. Just when she was starting to get used to her life as a planet-side shmuck, though, it got worse. Of course. That was the shit wheel that turned the world.

She was perched on a desk in one of the new classrooms in HQ, slamming the solid heel of her boot against the side hard enough to make a rude sound. She was bored, and starting to get a little pissed. It was nearly noon, and her students should have been here four hours ago.

Not that they'd been doing much learning. Today, like almost every day for the last month they'd be helping with reconstruction, with Jack offering some pointers every now and then. It was weird for her too – she was most accustomed to breaking than building.

Jack pushed herself off the desk and into the hallway, scanning the faces she passed for a familiar one. Not like she knew everyone at HQ on a first name basis, but she knew her people from the rest. Maybe something else had come up.

Maybe before Shepard she would have seen this for what it was, but new Jack had a corner of her heart that was hopeful as a child's. She kept it buried under a thousand layers of bitterness and foul language, but it was there – right there at the center of everything. Maybe that was her spinning wheel. Even when she barged into the locker room and saw the row where her kids kept their things totally emptied out, it didn't register.

Not until she found Rodriguez, slinging a well-worn duffel over her shoulder.

"What's the deal, Rodriguez?" Jack said, crossing her arms and leaning hard into the locker, loud enough to make the girl jump. "You little shits pulling some kind of prank or something?"

Rodriguez wouldn't meet her eye. "No. At least I'm not."

"So what the fuck's the deal?" Jack demanded. And though the girl looked like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, it still didn't register. Not until she looked up, not until Jack got a look at her eyes – filled to the brim with pity.

"I'm going home," said Rodriguez. "I think the rest have already gone."

Jack couldn't form a thought for a full five seconds. "What home?" she finally managed. "With everything broken down like it is?"

"Doesn't mean home isn't still there, under it all," Rodriguez said. "And most of them found their families. The ones who didn't are moving on to do something else. They joined up with repair crews, for big cities or the Citadel or the relays. That's just what I heard, anyway."

Jack struggled to speak, her mouth flapping like some dumb fish out of water, flapping its dumb body around, trying to breathe. "None of you thought to tell me or anything? Just let me sit around like some fucking idiot waiting for you guys to show up?"

Rodriguez considered this. "I think they didn't want to … well, you know."

"I don't, actually," Jack spat. "They didn't want to what?"

Rodriguez shifted from foot to foot and looked away again. She wasn't the brightest or the best biotic there was, but she'd always been the good one, the one Jack looked out for the most. And now she couldn't even look Jack in the fucking eye. There weren't words for how bad that cut. "They thought you'd be … upset. And I thought … well, we'll see each other again. Right?"

So that's what this was. Her kids were letting her down easy. The shutters came slamming down around that tender spot in her heart, and suddenly Jack was old Jack - crazy Jack, heartless Jack. She looked that girl in the eye like she was less than dirt. "Don't bother," she said, pushing away from the locker.

"Ms. Nought, wait—"

Jack was already halfway out the door. "Have a nice life, Rodriguez. Or don't. Doesn't make a fucking difference to me," she called over her shoulder.

She shoved through the halls into the obnoxious daylight, walking so fast she thought she might fly away. She was breathing hard, pulling each breath in and out like she had a knife in her back. Maybe she did.

She wandered, with a hole in her chest the size of Vancouver. She tried to put it back in its place – each little thought, each little feeling, right in its little box – but the longer it sat there in the back of her throat the harder it got to swallow it.

She'd tried. She'd taken those kids in. She'd put every bit of herself into teaching them and keeping them safe. That last day, when the Reapers fell she'd nearly passed out dead a hundred times from the effort of keeping them alive. All of them, so young and inexperienced, with only a fraction of the power she had at her command. So she put eyes in the back of her head and a barrier up around them all. She'd taken shots meant for those kids. She did it because she had to, because they were her kids and she was all they had.

And it turned out she didn't mean that much to them after all. They'd bugged out without even bothering to let her know.

Her feet planted into solid ground. She stared at the budding grass beneath her feet, peeking through the piles of melting snow. She felt a warm breeze at her back, like two hands gently pushing her along. She felt the sun on her face.

And in that moment, she broke. The performance, taking it on the chin, swallowing her anger and her worry and fear so sharp it cut her insides into ribbons; it ended in that moment when she looked up at the sun. There were only stark, brutal facts now; that she, Jack Nothing, was alone. Her kids had gone. Shepard was as good as dead up in that hospital room. She might as well have been, because the Shepard Jack knew wouldn't conk out like this for so long. Shepard would have woken up by now. Shepard would have ripped that shit out of her arms and hobbled out of bed.

She would have, if she wasn't being …

Something clicked, and the next thing she knew she was running to the hospital as fast as her legs could go, her feet slamming into the mushy ground, splattering pedestrians with mud. One called her a maniac as she whistled past, and though she would have liked to send him crashing into the nearest bush, she didn't stop – she didn't stop for anything. She bounded over traffic and snarled at anyone who told her to slow down. She didn't stop until she'd broken through security, careened through the doors of the hospital and hit the lift, until she'd come to a filthy skidding stop at the nurses station outside Shepard's room.

"What -?" one of the nurses stammered, her eyes popping wide at the sight of Jack.

"Why the fuck haven't you woken her up?" she screamed at the nurse, jabbing her finger at Shepard's room. "Why the fuck haven't you woken her up yet, huh? It's been long enough! Her bones have healed! Why the fuck are you keeping her sedated? I swear to god, if you're keeping her broken up in that bed I'll fucking rip out your throat. I swear on every god, I'll break you across my knee, you piece of shit! You tell me what you're doing to Shepard or I swear to god I will!"

She was breathing hard, her heart hammering the anvil of her bones, and she lit the biotics in her flesh until she was burning right there in that hospital hallway, dripping mud, her hands clenched into claws. She was burning, furious; she would rip this whole place apart brick from brick if they were keeping Shepard broken. She'd do it without regret.

"Ma'am, she's in a coma, we can't just –" the nurse stammered.

"You're keeping her half dead, I know you are! Don't you fucking lie to me!"

She heard Security thudding down the hall and she was old Jack, crazy Jack; she felt herself sinking into a crouch, that familiar instinct to fight shrieking in her ears. She would claw her way out of this. She'd get Shepard and bring her someplace safe, someplace where they'd try to help her instead of keeping her dead. She'd splatter anyone who got in her way.

She would have done, too, if not for Admiral Hackett.

Jack didn't know how the fuck he always managed to be on the scene within seconds, like he had some kind of homing beacon for trouble related to Shepard built into his brain. Maybe it was instinct of his own, and that she could appreciate. He strode smoothly into the center of the conflict, his hands held out like Moses holding back the Red Sea.

"Ms. Nought is with me," he said smoothly. "I'd like a word with her please. In private."

"But – but—" one of the nurses stammered, Security at her elbow.

"Thank you," Hackett said as if they'd agreed with him. His hand clamped hard around Jack's arm, steely fingers biting into flesh, and he steered her into the first empty room he found. Shock was probably the only thing that saved him.

She wrenched herself out of his grasp as he shut the door behind them. "The last man to grab me like that got his face caved in," she hissed. "Touch me again, and I can't promise the same or worse won't happen to you."

"Enough," he snapped, like a lash across her back. "There comes a point where someone starts to be more trouble than they're worth. Shepard may have vouched for you, but one more display like back there and my patience will come to an end. Don't push me."

Hackett spoke so fiercely that it took her a good moment to realize that pit in her gut was fear. He strode around pulled tight, uniform pressed, expression carefully neutral, so she'd made the first mistake of survival and underestimated this old man. She should have seen it; he was a warrior. He was dangerous. He hadn't gotten that scar on his face baking cookies.

But rage made her reckless, and hurt made her stupid. "Right," she hissed. "I push you, then what?"

"You think you'd have gotten within a hundred feet of Shepa—of this hospital without my express clearance?" Hackett demanded, leaning close, his horribly familiar eyes glinting like ice in the sun. "I don't care what she's said. You toe the line or you'll never see her again, not while she's here. I can promise you that."

Too late she realized his stake in Shepard was far from professional. It was so obvious, so bleedingly stupidly obvious that she could have kicked herself to Luna. She knew that look in Hackett's eye because she knew herself – it was the same. Revulsion made her throat tight; she didn't want to have anything in common with this shitpile. She was backed into the wall, and every instinct in her body was screaming at her to shove him away and get the fuck out, but she stood her ground. For Shepard. "I want to know why they're keeping her dead!" she shouted. "It's over a month, okay? Why the fuck is she still dead?!"

Hackett did not reply immediately, but unlike everyone else in this awful place he did not avoid her gaze. He stared her down, and she couldn't decide if she hated or respected him for it. "She was badly hurt," he said finally. "There were … there were many wounds to address."

"If I'd wanted a vague answer, I'd go ask the nurses. You tell it to me straight right fucking now."

She wanted to sound tough, but her voice trembled like she was close to tears, like she wasn't a fucking hardened criminal but a hurt little girl. And he heard it. He was quiet, and she got the feeling he was judging her then – weighing all he knew of her, weighing all Shepard must have said about her. In that odd moment she was suddenly struck by how little she knew of this man, and how weirdly important he'd become – the true guard at Shepard's door.

"They are keeping her under because they are unable to give her painkillers. Without them, the healing process would be excruciating. They are waiting for the worst to pass before … before they bring her up," Hackett said in a slow voice, and Jack was struck by how old he sounded, like he'd lived for a thousand years, like he'd watched everyone he'd known die. Like the thought of Shepard suffering in there was pain for him too.

"Why can't they give her painkillers?" Jack asked immediately.

He shook his head. "It's not for me to say."

"But you know!"

He said nothing for a long time. "They will bring her up soon," he said. "Just a few more days. Be patient, and … well. Just be patient."

He might as well have told her to go take a fucking promenade on the sun. Abruptly her temper was back, boiling in her veins, burning at the back of her throat, and because she couldn't very well haul off and hit him, she shoved past him and into the hallway. She wove through the halls and out into the open, into the obnoxious sunlight once again.

She found the tallest fucking tree in Vancouver.

And she ripped it right out of the ground.

* * *

_Kaidan woke with a migraine the next morning. The familiar pain shot through his skull, pulsing and thick, making his stomach turn. Of course, he thought bitterly. Of course he'd get a migraine his first day away with Shepard. He held a hand to his brow to shield his eyes and sat up, searching for her._

_She was still in her underwear, drinking coffee and watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan. Though he'd seen every inch of her last night, there was something new and thrilling about seeing her now, legs propped up on the windowsill, sipping her coffee and smiling a little as the sun reflected a thousand times on the surface of the lake._

" _Hey," she said when she caught sight of him. "Good morning."_

" _Morning," he echoed._

_Her smile faded as she watched him. "What's wrong? You look hungover."_

_Though he was miserable, a part of him was pleased she could tell just from a glance. "Close enough. It's a migraine."_

" _Shit, really?" She got up and wrenched the blinds shut before padding back to the bed. "Oh, Kaidan."_

_He waved away her concern. "It's not a big deal."_

" _I've known badasses laid low by migraines. You don't have to play tough," she said, crossing her arms._

" _I'm not playing tough," he argued. "I get them all the time. Just have to wait for it to pass." He opened an eye and watched her. "I'm sorry."_

" _You don't have to apologize for getting a migraine Kaidan," she said, brushing a lock of his hair off his brow._

" _Well, I thought you might have plans that I'm getting in the way of."_

_She smirked. "Yeah, I got some plans," she said. "My plan is to park myself next to you and stay in my underwear all day. Can you handle that?"_

_He chuckled. "Yeah, I think so."_

" _Good." She leaned closer and brushed his lips with hers. "Now hold on. I'm going to get you some ice."_

" _Sam, come on," he said, reaching for her. "You don't have to fuss."_

" _What if I want to?" she said, riffling through her knapsack and shrugging into an oversized button-down. "Let me take care of you."_

_He'd never had anyone ask to care for him. He'd never really needed it, honestly, but there was something about Shepard standing over him with an expression that managed to be both stern and tender. "All right," he said. "Only if I get to return the favor."_

" _Sure," she said. "You'll get your chance."_

_And so he lay back in bed, the sheets still strewn about from when they had made love only hours earlier. Shepard rummaged under the bed for the remote and flipped on the TV, skimming the channels with a totally unselfconscious smile, one that seemed to light her from within. "What do you like to watch?" she asked him._

_"Hm?"_

_"I just realized I have no idea what kind of TV you like. Or … well, what kind of anything you like."_

_"I like you," he said, threading an arm around her waist and pulling her into his side._

_"Aside from me," she said, as she struggled to keep a straight face._

_He had to think about it. "I like hockey," he said. "I try to catch the Canucks with my dad whenever I'm home. Grab a cold one, drink it together."_

_"Do you yell at the TV when they lose?"_

_"Nah, I don't. Dad rarely yells either, even when he's mad," Kaidan said. "He gets depressed though. He goes to his garage and carves a crappy birdhouse."_

_She giggled. "Anything else?"_

_He thought for a moment "I like Citadel Investigator a lot."_

_"You like cheesy crime shows!" she crowed, "Oh my god, that's perfect. I should have guessed."_

_"It's not cheesy!" he said indignantly. "It's got good writing. The crimes are always really interesting."_

_"It is so cheesy you could make a pizza with it," she said, jabbing him in the side with her elbow._

_"Pretty lame, Shepard."_

_"Yeah, okay that was lame. But I'm serious. The head detective guy, what's his name?"_

_"Bruce Smith."_

_"Yeah, that guy. He's always shooting off these silly little one liners. 'Looks like this guy was stabbed to death!' And he comes along and says something like '… no guts, no glory'. You KNOW that's bad."_

_"You're dreaming," he insisted stubbornly. "How about you? What kind of fine television do you prefer, oh esteemed judge of popular culture?"_

_She waved him away. "I never said I was an expert. And granted, my own preferences probably render my opinion invalid. But you got it anyway."_

_"And now that you've gotten the disclaimer out of the way …"_

_Her lips quirked. "Fine. I like cartoons."_

_It was so utterly, perfectly Shepard that he had to catch his breath for a moment. That tender hearted woman, watching adventures meant for children._

_Before he could say a word she was talking so quickly that he realized she was embarrassed. "It's nothing really. I didn't get a lot of TV or other popular culture on mom's ship. But she had these old cartoons – Aileen the Commando and Star Friends – and I used to watch them with her all the time." She was quiet for a moment. "I guess I like how simple everything was, and … geez this sounds dumb. How pure."_

_"Pure?"_

_"Yeah. Like most things you see are kind of mean-spirited, you know what I mean? If it's funny, you're laughing at someone, not with someone. If it's serious, it's the kind of drama where it doesn't have a lot of pity or empathy for the characters. But cartoons aren't really like that. Maybe it's simple, but it's good too. I like that."_

_His head gave another sick twinge and the bag of ice cubes slipped into his lap, but all he could do was stare at Shepard and imprint the details of her face in his thoughts, reconciling this tender woman to the Commander and figurehead. How lovely she was, he marveled. How precious._

_"Ahh, just forget about it," she mumbled, embarrassed._

_But he pulled her close and kissed her deeply. "What do you say we watch some now?"_

_And he saw in her eyes relief, that he wouldn't judge her for something so close to her heart. She curled into his side and he wrapped his arm around her waist, holding her close, and there they watched TV until his migraine faded, until the day faded, until it grew dark and intimate and wanting. And he could not remember the last time he was this happy._

* * *

Kaidan shot upright, still half-tangled in his sheets. His heart pounded furiously against his ribcage, as if struggling to escape.

For half a second, he believed she lay beside him, still sleeping, no longer plagued by nightmares. He reached out to stroke her hair when his hands passed through flesh and into the haphazard pile of pillows. Loss was a lump in his throat, one he couldn't swallow.

He fell back into the pillows with a rough exhale.  _No matter what,_ he thought, that old promise turned mantra.  _I'm coming, Shepard._


	5. Chapter 5

_Kaidan slept like the dead that night, as he always did after a migraine. He woke a few hours before dawn to see Shepard already awake, pacing the length of their hotel room. For a moment the scene was surreal, occupying that delicate space between waking and dreams, so easily shattered._

" _Shepard?" he asked her blearily. "What's wrong?"_

_She jumped when she heard his voice, her eyes widening for a brief moment before she relaxed, and he wondered if she had forgotten he was there. "I'm restless," she admitted finally. "I can't stop thinking."_

_He groaned a bit as he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Talk to me about it," he said, patting the bed beside him._

_She paced one more length of the room before collapsing beside him, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I'm just thinking about the Reapers," she said. "It's not over with them, you know? They're coming."_

" _Yeah." He remembered, all right. He remembered the Prothean VI on Ilos and Sovereign on Virmire. He remembered the battle over the Citadel, and how many had died that day. He would have liked to forget, if remembering wasn't so important._

" _The Council thinks I'm full of shit," she said and though she attempted to sound blasé, he saw the lines of stress at the corners of her mouth. "They think this talk about Reapers was just some story Saren was feeding me. Sometimes I wonder if they're right."_

" _You know what you saw, Shepard," he reminded her._

" _Yeah, I know. Just . . . people call you a liar enough and you almost start believing it."_

" _Hey." He caught her chin and gently stroked it with his thumb. "I believe you. If you're a liar, then I'm a liar."_

_She smiled then, a slow smile that seemed to lighten her features from within. "You always say the nicest things."_

" _I'm just being honest."_

" _I know! That's the best part." She leaned close and kissed him before curling into his side. They didn't speak for a long while, and he relished the feel of her slow breathing, her palm laid flat on his chest._

" _Still not tired?" he asked, grinning._

" _Hungry, actually. You?"_

" _Starving." He brought her hand to his lips. "I'll order a pizza. Supposedly they're good around here."_

" _There's no way in hell there's a pizza joint open at 3am," she laughed._

" _20 credits say there is."_

" _You're on, Alenko. It's almost a chore, taking your money like this."_

_It took him five minutes to find a place willing to deliver to their hotel, and another half hour for the meal to come. Shepard passed him his credits, making a show of being disgruntled, though he knew she was pleased. They ate half their weight in pizza and pasta until sunrise, talking all the while. And when she finally fell asleep as the sun crested the horizon, he kissed her brow and settled beside her._

* * *

"Give me the report," Kaidan said as Traynor fell into step beside him.

"Repairs are nearly complete," she said smartly. "FTL drives are functional, navs are good. We're waiting for the eezo core now."

"What's the hold up?"

"Joker doesn't like the balance, he says. The calibration is off."

"What does Adams say?"

"They've been going at it all day." Traynor coughed delicately. " _Words_  were exchanged."

"Of course," Kaidan groaned.

"I'm just the messenger," Traynor shrugged. "I would mediate, but I lack the training. Ahem. And the perspective."

"I'll handle it," he said shortly, striding off in the direction of the engineering deck.

It had been six weeks since the crash. It had taken colossal effort and remarkable ingenuity of the entire crew, but somehow they had nearly done it. They'd been forced to cannibalize one of the shuttles for material for physical repairs, and charting their location from planetside and short atmosphere shuttle runs had taken the collaborative effort of both he and the navigators. It had taken two weeks alone to find food and water, test their suitability, and supplement the Normandy's provisions. But they had nearly done it.

Their location wasn't ideal, but ultimately it was not as bad as Kaidan had feared. They'd calculated that it would take about ten months to reach Earth, and that was if they weren't able to come across a functional main relay. He wouldn't count on one, though; the relays in this system were for the most part uncharted, and he would rather take the sure and slow bet of FTL travel than gamble with the relays.

At first, morale had been high. As Kaidan suspected, putting the crew to work toward a goal inspired a hopeful mood. They rallied around one another, worked nearly eighteen-hour days, and did not argue with the rationing. People sang songs about Shepard and played games. He caught Tali and Garrus locked in a passionate embrace, and even Javik had seemed to lose some of his old brusqueness, now that his task was done. Though, that might have been Liara's doing more than his own.

But the weeks grew longer and tempers grew short. Every small triumph was met with Joker's grief and anger, and it began to poison the general mood. When they'd completed physical repairs, Joker had called the Normandy a corpse and retreated to the cockpit. When they'd finished provisioning, Joker had half-heartedly insisted they break his down and distribute it instead. It didn't take a genius to guess the reason for his depression.

Kaidan had known grief. For two awful years he believed Shepard had been killed when the first Normandy had gone down. He'd raged, bargained, raged some more. He'd never quite reached acceptance but he'd gotten close. He remembered the nightmares as clearly as if they still plagued him; visions of her floating in the void, frozen solid like a lump of plastic. And when he'd discovered her alive and working for Cerberus, the whole process had begun again.

So he was the last man alive who would tell Joker how to grieve. But the fact remained Joker's grief was now getting in the way of their directive. Kaidan's own personal considerations aside, the Normandy was a ship full of people who wanted to see their families again. They were owed the chance to discover if their loved ones were even still alive.

Kaidan rode the elevator down two levels, striding onto the engineering deck. It must be bad, he thought with dismay; he could hear Adams – one of the most even-tempered men he knew – ranting through the doors.

"—sick of that damn hotshot pilot who thinks he knows propulsion theory," Adams snapped to Gabby. "He wants to talk to me about the core, he needs to do a little better than how it  _feels."_

"Lieutenant Adams? What's the problem?" Kaidan asked carefully.

"The problem is pretty simple," Adams said, rounding on Kaidan. "We've got a pilot who refuses to fly because the eezo core doesn't  _feel_  right.  _Feel right._ Last I checked none of this business is about feelings."

It was typical Joker, all right. "Has he said anything else?"

"What else is there to say? We came off the trial buzz in and out of atmo, and he's talking about how the ship doesn't  _feel_ right, how it's listing or sputtering, etcetera. I can promise you, Major; these problems he's talking about are fantasy. Nonexistent."

"To be fair, he would be in a better position to note them," Kaidan equivocated. "Since he's flying the ship?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Now all three engineers looked at him as if he was not only wrong but monumentally stupid. "Let me tell you something, Major; it's a miracle we've even got this bird in the air at all. We've cobbled together a working engine from string and paperclips, practically. Princess up there isn't going to get a perfectly balanced engine from what we've got, but I'll tell you it's damn close," Adams said fiercely, the other nodding behind his back. "What's more important, it's safe."

"You're right," Kaidan said. "You know how he is, though."

Adams looked around before taking a step closer. "Look, we all know what this is about," he said in a lower, more sympathetic voice. "He doesn't want to leave because of EDI."

"I'll talk to him," Kaidan said, holding up his hands. "We need to do a few more trials before we leave, anyway. Hopefully it'll give him time to get acquainted with the idea."

"Good luck," Adams said, shaking his head. "No offense intended, Major, but if Shepard were here she'd kick his ass into gear, and he'd love her for it."

Kaidan snorted. "None taken. Triple check the core for me; we'll do another test in two hours."

"Yes, sir," the engineers chorused as he strode from the room to the elevator. Adams was right; Kaidan was even-handed and understanding, far better suited as a mediator than a motivator. He didn't have Shepard's temper, her vital spark, her low tolerance for bullshit.

The trek to the cockpit took much less time than he would have liked.

"Joker?"

The pilot didn't answer at first, focused as he was with something in his lap. "What is it?"

"You got a minute?"

"I got a lot of 'em," Joker said, waving his hand. Kaidan caught the sarcastic bite in his tone.

He decided to cut right to it. "You've been making trouble for the engineers."

Joker snorted. "They're a bunch of babies and you know it."

"To hear them tell it, sounds a lot like you're trying to tell them how to do their jobs."

"I wasn't telling them shit," Joker said, rounding on Kaidan. "I gave them my feedback on the core. It doesn't feel spaceworthy. My opinion is supposed to count for something, last I checked. I am the one who flies this ship."

"That is true," Kaidan equivocated. "You know we won't get a perfectly balanced engine from the materials we have on hand. It doesn't need to be perfect, just functional and reliable. Is it functional?"

"I guess," Joker shrugged bitterly. "Aren't you going to ask me if it's reliable?"

"The engineers are more suited to answer that question."

"Ah, right. Sure."

Around this point in the conversation, Shepard would have snapped and told Joker to get his whiny ass in line; she did not appreciate people taking advantage of her goodwill. But Kaidan was not Shepard; he decided to broach a different tactic.

"Is this about EDI?" he asked, cutting straight to it.

Joker flinched but did not turn around. "No."

"Joker. Is this about EDI?"

This time, he didn't respond, his shoulders hunching as if he desperately wanted to block out the world and everything else that conspired to hurt him.

"I know this isn't much comfort," Kaidan said, crossing his arms and leaning against the bulkhead. "But . . . well, everyone's lost something or – or someone on this ship."

"Is this where you to tell me to get over it?" Joker asked bitterly, his hands fisting in his hair.

"No. But the fact here is that there are others depending on you to do your job, and you can't fall completely to pieces. Not yet."

"So it's not 'get over it', it's 'pull yourself together'."

"If you want to put it like that, yeah," Kaidan said. "We need you to fly the ship. I guess that's all there is to it. Whatever else there is, it's no one's business as long as you don't make it their business."

Joker didn't say anything for a long moment, so Kaidan pushed off of the bulkhead and began to make his way toward the CIC when Joker held out a hand to stop him. "Kaidan, wait-" he cut in, his voice raw.

"What is it?"

Joker struggled for a moment. "How do you get over them? The ones that leave you?"

Kaidan was taken aback. "I- I don't think I'm the right person to ask."

"Because you got her back?"

Kaidan shook his head. "No . . . because I never did get over it. And I don't think it's even possible to get over that kind of loss. "

Joker deflated, and it was like a kick in the gut. "Great."

"I . . . I should clarify, I guess. It doesn't hurt as bad as time goes on. You don't forget them. You continue on. You find something funny one day and surprise yourself when you laugh. Food has taste again. They're always there, but you remember more of the good times than the bad. If you're lucky, if you work at it, you remember them more than their absence."

Joker was quiet for so long that Kaidan wondered if he had said the wrong thing, but finally Joker turned around and nodded, his eyes bright. "Thanks," he said quietly, throat working.

"Ah- don't mention it," Kaidan said, relieved. "We're going to do another low atmo test in a little under two hours, all right?"

Joker nodded again, more brusquely this time. "Yeah," he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "I'll get on it."

Kaidan carefully clapped him on the back before striding from the cockpit. Likely it wouldn't make much difference when doors were closed and Joker was alone with what he'd lost, but he held out hope that when they were on duty, Joker would remember enough about EDI to know that she'd disapprove of his grief, that it would have made her sad. That, at the end, she'd have wanted him to smile, even if it was tinged by bitterness.

He hoped, because days like today he'd have to remind himself just the same.

* * *

_After indeterminate darkness, the dreams returned._

_Such dreams. Vivid as life, infused with too much color and sound. She was borne along like a leaf caught in the swift current of a river – a burnt, broken leaf, shedding parts, leaving pieces behind. She lay flat on her back and let the river carry her on. She watched the stars dance._

_'Death is a river,' Thane had said to her once. 'One that we all must take to the sea.'_

_'So I'm dead.' Her voice rose to the heights of the sky and lived among those impartial stars._

_'You are Shepard,' Thane said, as if it was an answer to her question._

_She didn't believe in life after death. She mourned the dead because she knew they were gone forever, and no amount of longing or sorrow would bring them back. Yet here she was in this halfway place, on a river bearing her to the sea._

_'I'm sorry I couldn't save you,' Shepard whispered._

_Thane smiled above her, his dark eyes shining. 'You did,' he said gently._

_But she hadn't. She remembered, so clearly, so perfectly: the blade sinking into his stomach, the wet sound tearing flesh made. She remembered Thane in his hospital bed, his chest hitching as each breath grew more difficult. She remembered his wasted body going slack, his hand drifting to his side, strong fingers silent and still. She remembered how desperately she tried not to cry._

_'Death a river,' said another voice, and she saw Mordin kneeling at the shore, raking his long fingers through the silt until he produced a stone, blue as an eye. 'Claims substantiated.'_

_'So I_ am  _dead,' Shepard said. 'I am if I can see you.'_

_Mordin considered her, blinking quickly. 'Claims unsubstantiated. Perhaps unconscious. Likely sedated. Many injuries to heal. Other …' a sharp inhalation, '… things to account for.'_

_'Even in my dreams you know more than me,' Shepard grumbled._

_'No! Easy mistake to make. Sloppy. Better than that.' Mordin regarded her animatedly. 'Not dreams.'_

_'So where am I?'_

_Mordin pocketed the blue stone and resumed his study of the shore. 'According to male drell, death a river. According to salarians, life and death a wheel. According to some humans, afterlife in the sky. According to you, nothing after death. One or other. Right or wrong.' There was a pause as he took a deep breath, perhaps tasting the dream. 'According to experience, truth … somewhere between.'_

"Come on, you daft bint,"  _came a different voice, one rough with age, echoing through the forest._ "Got a Cuban with your name on it. Can't very well smoke laid up in here like a stiff, now can you?"

_'Why?' she asked Mordin. She didn't know what she was asking, but true to form he seemed to know her unspoken question anyway._

_'Had to be you,' he said gently. 'Everyone else would have gotten it wrong.'_

_'I didn't get it right,' she insisted, her throat tight. 'If I had, no one would have died. You … you wouldn't have died.'_

_'Untrue. Death part of life. Was my time. Was old, Shepard.'_

_'Not that old.'_

_He smiled. 'Stubborn.'_

_Already he was fading. She saw his hands grow translucent just as his fingers brushed the edge of a crawfish shell. Was the sun rising? Was it sunlight that revealed him to be merely a shade, a shadow in this dreamlike place? 'Proud to have known you, Shepard,' he said quietly. 'Will see you again.'_

_'When?' she pleaded desperately._

_But Mordin was gone, and she was alone. The river dragged her onward, and the stars watched her progress impassively, distant and cold. And she hated it here. She hated these cruel ghosts, who watched her pass, who uprooted long buried sorrows._

_'I thought you'd have enjoyed the rest,' said Anderson at her side. Beyond the scope of the river the sky erupted into distant flames, red dotting the everlasting dark. He sagged beside her with a long sigh, like air rushing out of a balloon. 'I am.'_

_'Why?' she wondered._

_Anderson watched the world burn above them, the flash of shipfire, the cutting red of the Reapers' gaze. 'Feels like years since I just sat down.'_

_'I'm dead,' she insisted. 'I said I'd rest when I'm dead.'_

_'Not quite, Commander.' His eyes crinkled at the corners. 'You got some fights left. Some living left to do.'_

_'So did you,' she said through guilt large enough to choke on. She remembered his apartment and his pictures of Kahlee, and how awful it had felt to walk through a life that she'd stolen from him. 'I'm sorry I couldn't save you.'_

_'You can't save them all, Shepard,' he told her softly._

_'Why not?!" she demanded._

_He flickered, only slightly. 'Because death is a river.'_

"I'll put you back together if I have to, Shepard,"  _came a voice from beyond the stars, echoing over the trees, vibrating in her ears._ "Don't think I won't."

_'Listen to them,' Anderson said, looking up at the sky, at the fire bright stars. 'Listen to how much they love you.'_

_'Who?'_

_But Anderson didn't seem to hear her. He was looking at her like he used to, like he had ever since the beginning, even when she was Cerberus; with bright affection and steady regard. 'I'm proud of you, child,' he said softly, and then he was gone._

_And now there was pain, flooding her broken limbs, filling her struggling lungs. Sharp knives pressing into every inch of skin. She was burning in this river, this river of fire and blood. Even though she struggled, her body did not move. Her hands did not make ripples in the flowing water. The pain faded, but the stars above her head did not. They watched, a silent chorus in an operatic tragedy, waiting for the aria._

_'How can you look up at the sky and not believe anything?' Ashley said to her. Just as she remembered; tall and beautiful and wild. Strong as ten men. A heart like riveted steel._

_'Because I lived there,' Shepard said. 'Because … ' Because that's where her mother had died, where she had died herself. Because heaven is breathing deep and you can't breathe in the void. She said nothing else, yet Ashley understood._

_'You're all right, Skipper. You're just fine.'_

_'I'm dead,' Shepard pointed out._

_Ashley grinned. 'Just a little bit. You'll get better.'_

_Shepard tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. 'Did you?'_

_'Sure did. Look at me.' Ashley spun for her benefit, and suddenly she was wearing that black dress she wore on the Citadel, her dark hair a glossy curtain down her back, that implacable Avenger rifle caught in her strong hands. She was whole and healthy and beautiful, just as beautiful as always._

"Why the fuck haven't you woken her up?"  _came a voice from far away, echoing through the dark forest, strident and sharp and altogether out of place in this grey dream._ "I swear to god, if you're keeping her broken up in that bed I'll fucking rip out your throat. I swear on every god, I'll break you across my knee, you piece of shit! You tell me what you're doing to Shepard or I swear to god I will!"

_'What was that?' Shepard asked._

_Ashley regarded her seriously. 'The ones who are waiting for you.'_

_But this made no sense. Everyone was dead, the Reapers had won. This dream was the only place people lived now. 'Why are they waiting for me?'_

_'Because you're family,' Ashley said, and she smiled. So bright, so warm. Like being in the sight of the sun._

_'You're my family too,' Shepard whispered. 'Don't leave me.'_

_But Ashley shook her head. 'I have to, Skipper.'_

_'Why?'_

_Ashley spoke gently, like an embrace. 'I'll see you again,' she promised. 'It'll be a blink of an eye for me, but for you it won't be for a good long time. Lots of long years. Lots of kids with LT. Just like you planned, right?'_

"Don't you fucking die on me, okay?"  _came that same voice again, that wounded bird voice, that broken glass voice._ "You're the only one left."

_'See?" Ashley said, indicating toward the stars with the mouth of her rifle. 'They still need you.'_

_And Shepard knew she was right. There were people up above that she needed too. There was a buttoned up woman and a foul mouthed man. There was a broken woman and an old man with scars, the two of them so different, yet marked by the same sad eyes. And, and -there was a man with eyes the color of whiskey and laughter like smoke, who made promises and saw them out. She needed them still._

_'I'm sorry I couldn't save you,' Shepard whispered hoarsely._

_Ashley smiled. 'Who says you didn't?'_

_But she hadn't. She remembered, she remembered so, so well. The advancing geth, the slow realization that they weren't all going to make it out of this alive, like she promised. Ashley's voice on the comm, cracking hard, shattering,_ _**YOU KNOW IT'S THE RIGHT CHOICE, LT** _ **,** _and how it remained even after the blast, so easily seen from space, the way it had infiltrated her dreams._

_And she was crying now, but the uncaring river bore her forward, and the stars continued their heartless dance._

_'Come on, Sammy bean,' said a voice she had known longest, one that had left first. The longest wound. 'You're okay.'_

_'Mom,' Shepard sobbed. 'Mom …'_

_And it was her, just like she remembered. Just like the last time. Perfectly pressed uniform, perfectly polished shoes, hair pulled back into a perfect bun. Green eyes, lined cheeks. Thin, yet strong; arms that could hold for days. 'Look at you,' she said softly. 'My brave girl.'_

_And Shepard sobbed because she couldn't speak, because shame and grief were still too fresh, even after three years of living without her, of living with those awful last words she said in a moment of anger, without considering that life was delicate and precious, and her mother was no monument of stone but a woman made of flesh and bones, with a heart just as delicate as any._

_'Come now,' Hannah said, her eyes bright. 'You know I can't watch you cry like this.'_

_'I'm sorry,' Shepard sobbed, and the words spilled out because she was dead and this was her chance to make up for her crimes. 'I was an asshole. You didn't fail me, okay? I shouldn't have said that. I don't need a – a father.'_

_'Yes you do,' said Hannah sadly. 'Maybe not everyone does, but you did because you said you did.' She let out a long, trembling breath._

_'I don't,' Shepard insisted. 'I needed you. I would have – I would have done better if I'd had you. If I'd been more like you.'_

_'Who told you such a thing?' Hannah demanded sharply. 'Who told you that you needed to be anything but you?'_

_'But –'_

_'Listen to me, you stubborn girl. I can't tell you how many times I looked into your little face growing up and knew that you would be everything I wasn't, and that you'd be better for it. Someday soon you'll understand exactly what I mean.'_

"Come on, Sammy,"  _whispered this last voice, ragged with age and grief. Shepard felt something cold and trembling engulf her hands, but when she lifted them out of the water to see what it was, only her pale bloodless skin looked back._ "I got some things to tell you. Some things I should have told you a long time ago."  _A pause, another ragged gasp. Something wet on her face, like rain._ "Don't go before I can get it out."

_Shepard watched her mother's face grow heartbreakingly fond. 'Listen to him," she breathed. 'Just like I told him. Longer than even I could have done.'_

_'What?'_

_'You have to go back now, Sammy bean,' Hannah said as if she hadn't heard her, and above them the stars shifted and spun, whirling faster and faster until they were blurred like paint on a brightening canvas. 'You have to go back.'_

_'I can't,' whispered Shepard. 'I won't leave you.'_

_'You have to,' Hannah insisted quietly. 'It'll be hard and you'll be lonely. And I wish more than anything that I could be there for you, just a phone call or car ride away, so I could tell you how I made it. So I have to tell you now, because I won't get another chance; the moment I felt you under my heart, I wasn't alone. And it'll be the same for you.'_

_'Mom,' Shepard sobbed. 'Please don't go.'_

_She felt her mother's hands on her belly, on her brow, wiping away her tears. She crouched in the river and lay beside Shepard so that they floated together, buffeted by the current, borne along like leaves. They were the same height now. Hannah threaded her fingers through Shepard's and there they stayed, even when the river grew quick and the water grew sharp and the pain returned, so stunning that she gasped, cold air knifing through her lungs._

_'I'm sorry I couldn't save you,' Shepard whispered, because that was the wheel that ground her regret._

_'But you did,' said Hannah, smiling._

_And they drifted. The river was abruptly as it had been before, warm and gentle, and though it was night the stars shone brightly enough to dimly illuminate the forest. They grew brighter and brighter with each breath, and the voices on the other side of the veil no longer whispered but sang. Dark greens and deep blues, and how vast and endless the sky seemed, here at her mother's side. Heaven was no firmament stitched with silver thread. Heaven was the sea. Heaven was reunion._

_'Open your eyes,' Hannah said. 'Open your eyes, Sammy bean.'_


	6. Chapter 6

Shepard woke for the first time exactly forty one days after the Reapers were defeated, and Jack nearly missed it.

Not because she didn't know. As soon as Hackett cleared Jack with hospital Security, she'd made it a point of honor to be there every damn day, arms crossed over her chest, watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes. When the asshole doctors finally decided to pull Shepard up from her induced coma, Jack had known about it that hour. She'd had time to prepare.

She spent the night before huddled in her apartment, curled up on the couch watching the news with a lukewarm beer dangling from her negligent fingers. She didn't even really like beer or the news, but the way she saw it she didn't have anything else to distract herself with in this shitpile of a city.

For some reason, she couldn't get the last day of the war out of her head. Every time her eyes closed she saw streaks of fire and the electric blue of biotics stark against the black and grey of London's destruction. She remembered how fucking scared she had been. Her students were armed and armored to the teeth, full up with that blistering confidence, that assurance found in only the lucky and young, that death was something that happened to other people. She remembered how hard she worked to see them through alive despite it.

The fighting was so terrible that even a tough, gritty bitch like Jack still had nightmares about it. And through it all, while dealing with enough problems of her own, Shepard still found a moment to buzz Jack right before she'd run for the beam.

"Stay alive, Jack," she'd said. Her voice had cracked a little – through interference or tears, Jack didn't know.

For her part, she swallowed a lump in her throat the size of a cruiser. "Right back at you, Shepard. Try not to be a hero or anything. I know how you are:"

Shepard had laughed, because she knew too. Maybe she knew in that moment that she couldn't do it – that when it came down to the wire, she'd do everything in her power to achieve her objective, without giving a shit if it killed her or not.. "I'll do my best," she'd said, and though it sounded like a promise, Jack knew that it wouldn't mean anything in the end.

The anchorwoman arranged her features into a serious expression, though the amount of makeup she wore made any expression she affected look more like a mask than her real face. "Reports of riots at multiple reelection sites are still coming in. Thousands of dissenters in New York City, Hong Kong, and London protested the Alliance elections to replace the Parliament, who were killed nearly a year ago by the Reapers. Alliance forces were on the scene to keep the peace. No casualties reported."

Jack snorted and switched the TV off, tossing the remote on the couch. She'd seen enough of that shit firsthand for a lifetime. Likely she'd see even more, if these dissenters didn't get what they wanted.

She glanced at her chrono. 2:34am. They weren't going to wake Shepard up until 8:30, which meant Jack had six hours to fill. Easy when she'd had a crew to avoid and students to teach, when she'd had Shepard at her side. Not so easy now that she was alone.

She quickly considered her options. Sleep was out of the question, because any time she closed her eyes, her thoughts would quickly spin out of control, picking at the hard places, the shit she preferred to forget. She'd see Purgatory and that asshole Warden flicking his mandibles at her. She'd see the assholes who screwed her over, and the assholes who had died. She'd see Shepard broken on a pile of rubble. She'd see Pragia.

The longer she sat around in her shoebox apartment, the more agitated she became, until the mere act of lying on her threadbare couch was physical pain. With an irritated huff, she got to her feet and grabbed her wallet, stepping out of her apartment and into the night. There were bars she could explore and a new club that had just opened, hoping to attract the local serviceman looking to cut loose for a night before they trudged back to base.

Jack liked clubs because she liked distractions, and as far as distractions went there was no better place to go when you were itching for something to take your mind off shit. It was too loud to think, for one thing, and most clubs usually boasted a finer spread than your run of the mill bar when it came to alcohol.

But most of all, if she choose to, Jack could weave through the crowd of people and throw back a few bourbons. She could close her eyes and let the heady pulse of the music take her far away, strip away every thought and worry until she was just a collection of impulses strung together by flesh and bone. In the club there was no room for worries so large they chewed a hole in her gut.

It was still cold, though spring was theoretically just around the corner, and Jack pulled her short coat tighter around her to ward away the chill. In the distance she could see city lights reflecting on the surface of English Bay. Shepard had mentioned it once or twice, and always with the same reverential tone. Apparently Kaidan had grown up around here, and his stories were hers.

Jack thought about Kaidan with a gut-twist that made the beef jerky she'd eaten a few hours ago lodge itself somewhere in her throat. She'd looked for the Normandy, just like everyone. It was priority one, as far as missing vessels went, and not just for the Alliance but for every sapient being in the galaxy. Why wouldn't it be? A ship crammed full of war heroes and decorated serviceman, and the only other human Spectre alive; that was payday, any way you sliced it. Whoever stubbed their toe on the Normandy's hull was looking at a pretty sizable reward.

Jack wasn't in it for the reward. A year ago monetary compensation might have turned her head, but these days she wasn't interested in anything beyond what paid for her food and cigarettes. She'd looked for the Normandy because she had fond memories of that ship, and the way she saw it there were few enough places like that in the galaxy already.

And if she was being honest with herself, she might have admitted that she looked for the Normandy because of Shepard. Because it was full to the brim with war heroes that Shepard happened to care about, and the way Jack saw it, Shepard had lost enough already. Because she'd wake up and look around for Kaidan, and the prospect of being the one to tell her that the Normandy hadn't been found and Kaidan was still missing made Jack sick to her stomach.

Just as she suspected, the club was packed with servicemen and civilians alike. Purple light flashed through the room in time with the thudding music, and smoke curled into the electric air, wafting above heads, creating a haze. She could feel the music when she closed her eyes laid her palm flat on the bar, loud enough that the glasses shuddered with each violent beat. She could smell sweat and cologne and alcohol, mingling in a manner that might have been disgusting any other day.

It was perfect.

So she drank more alcohol than was healthy. She smoked half a pack of cigarettes. She watched the DJ spinning music at the head of the room, looming above the dancers like a king surveying his subjects. A bony girl in a sequined halter top crashed into her back before wobbling off in the direction of the dance floor. Jack might have sent the girl crashing into the bar on any other day, but already her thoughts had become more like vague impulse, and her hair-trigger temper faded into nothing. She stubbed out the remainder of her cigarette and followed.

It wasn't music like Shepard liked – slow, sultry jazz crooned by winsome singers with wounded eyes – but music like a tidal wave; each beat crashing through her mind, in her bones, pounding like a second heart nestled under the first. She wove with the music, her hips swaying, arms aloft, fingers loose. She knew she was being watched, because this was how things went; Jack, moving under the purple lights, damp with sweat, and the tattoos under those lights, visceral and violent, covering the scars.

"Can I dance with you?"

Jack turned, craning up to see who had spoken. Another serviceman, or maybe a mercenary, she guessed going by his smart haircut and build. Blonde, blue-eyed. Nice enough. Clearly entranced by the figure she cut. Any other day she'd have told the guy to beat it, but tonight she wasn't the terrible and powerful Subject Zero but a lonely messed-up girl in a club. She nodded. She appreciated that he bothered to ask. Lonely messed-up girl or not, she'd still have smashed his face in if he touched her ass without letting her know about it first.

A new track descended over them, and they danced. He was nice about it, she noticed; kind of shy, a little sweet. She liked the angle of his jaw and the jagged scar cutting from bicep to wrist. 'From London' he'd said when he caught her looking, and she'd understood. He wrapped that scarred arm around her waist and held her close, so closely that she could feel each breath, each motion, so close that she could almost convince herself that this was natural.

"How'd you learn to dance like that, huh?" he asked her much later, leaning down to speak into her ear. Being nice, she guessed; trying to make conversation. She wasn't interested.

"From Commander Shepard," she lied. Anyone who knew Shepard would get the joke. Predictably, the serviceman did not.

"Damn," he said, caught between looking impressed and confused, like he wondered if she was just fucking with him. "You know Shepard?"

"I can't hear you!" she shouted over the music, grinding her hips into him. From the way his hand curled over her waist in response, she knew that she had succeeded in distracting him.

She wanted him to be distracting, so badly that it was like being a kid again, wishing for something so hard your whole body hurt. She wanted his handsomeness to strike some odd chord in her, his voice to ignite that mindless attraction. She was attracted, she supposed – he had nice hands, and he smelled pretty good – but it was like everything else in this place: vague and affected. It was night magic, and it had no place in daylight.

It didn't stop Jack, though. They danced and drank. In that heady place, surrounded by hundreds of writhing dancers, she pulled him close and kissed him hard enough to hurt, hard enough to break. His response was enthusiastic.

"Want to get out of here?" he asked her.

"And go where?"

He shrugged. "Wherever you want."

She considered him. He was damp with sweat, and his wheat blond hair was pressed to his forehead, sticking up in little tufts. He looked much like she felt in that moment; punch-drunk, careless, and a little desperate. She wondered what he was running from.

It was that observation that decided her. "Let's go to your place."

She wasn't sure why she bothered with the euphemism – it wasn't like she made a habit of being circumspect, like some people. Either way, he got the hint. He flagged a cab and crawled into the backseat behind her. He'd no sooner spoken his address before he was kissing her again, sliding his hands in her loose hair, pulling her so close that she couldn't breathe. But she allowed it, because she was drunk and he was inoffensive, and fucking a random stranger was preferable to the prospect of going home and waiting, worrying another hole in her gut.

He lived in one of the newly rebuilt apartment complex in downtown Vancouver. Not exactly prime real estate, but he was lucky to get a place in the city at all, as most people had taken to living in small communities on the outskirts while Vancouver was rebuilt. She'd been about to comment on his luck when he keyed in the code for his door and hit the switch, dragging her into the darkness of his living room. It was clean enough, and appropriately spartan, not that a dirty apartment would have put her off. And not like she had room to talk, either, considering the state of her own apartment.

She was drunk, but she still had her rules. When he reached for her shirt she pushed his hands away and stripped it herself. When he opened his mouth to speak, she smashed her lips to his, violently enough to give him pause, desperately enough to let him think that it was desire that drove her and not fear. It was not equal, she thought as he hammered away above her, each thrust rattling the bedframe. She was not an active participant in this charade. Too drunk to pretend, maybe, too heart-sore. Too broken to give a fuck.

She woke to sunlight. It took her a moment to remember where she was, what she'd done the night before. The club, the stranger, his inoffensive face and performance. He lay sprawled beside her, snoring quietly, his scarred arm dangling over the side of the bed. In daylight he looked different, somehow– larger, more substantial. It made her nervous for reasons she didn't understand.

She glanced at the chrono on his bedside table. 8:23am.

_Fuck._

"Fuck!" she hissed, digging through the pile of discarded clothes for her pants, yanking them on and settling them over her hips. The stranger stirred, opening his eyes and watching her blearily.

"Hey," he said. "Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving," she said, pulling her shirt over her head. She knew it didn't really answer her question, but couldn't bring herself to be more specific.

That got his attention. "I'm not going to see you again, am I?"

Any other day she'd have been cruel. As it was, she couldn't summon the temper necessary for cruelty. "Probably not."

He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, the scarred hand. "I don't even know your name."

"It's probably best that you don't."

"Right. Well … have a good one."

Jack said nothing, instead nodding once before hitting the door switch and stepping into the hallway. She wasn't running away, she insisted to herself. Jack didn't run away. Jack stood her ground and made meat of whatever fucked with her. Or at least she had, before Shepard, before the Reapers. Now, it was anyone's guess.

She flagged down a cab and glanced at her chrono again. 8:27am. She was going to miss it. She was as stupid as a bag of hammers. Fucking around, drinking too much, staying out too late. Sleeping in some strange man's bed, all because she was too much of a chicken-shit to face the dark things that lurked in her thoughts: dead Kaidan, blown up Normandy, broken Shepard. What to do with a future that felt hopeless and bleak.

She crashed through the hospital doors at 8:38am. Exchanged heated words with security at 8:40. Shepard was probably awake by now, she thought furiously. She was probably opening her eyes and looking around and wondering where she was. She'd look around and Jack wouldn't be there, and all those days spent waiting around would be for nothing because Jack hadn't been there when it actually mattered. Each step she took echoed through the immaculate hall like an accusation, each footfall blaming her;  _stupid, stupid, stupid._

She came to a skidding stop in front of the nurse's station, grabbing the desk until her knuckles creaked in protest. "Shepard," she gasped. "Is she-?"

"You're on time," said the nurse kindly, and Jack swallowed a hard lump in her throat; she'd been horrible to these nurses, ranging from petulant to violent, and despite it they still treated her with kindness in this horrible, heart-pounding moment. Jack followed the nurse through the hall, but even in her panic she couldn't not bring herself to cross the threshold of Shepard's room immediately. First, she breathed. She braced herself. Otherwise she'd lose her nerve.

The scene was much as she suspected. A handful of doctors and nurses making notes, manning equipment. Shepard, comatose still. Hackett stood at the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, and she saw a muscle fluttering in his jaw. Zaeed and Miranda stood side by side; Zaeed didn't seem to notice she'd entered the room, but Miranda gave her a look that could have curdled milk. "Nice of you to show up," she said, lips curling.

"Cram it, cheerleader," Jack retorted.

Miranda gave a decorous little sniff and wrinkled her nose, and Jack realize how she must seem to the rest of them; disheveled, filthy, stinking of bar smoke and alcohol and her inoffensive stranger's bed. She'd kick Miranda's ass across the Pacific for rubbing her face in it later, but at the moment Jack did not give a shit.

She could not speak, so she watched Shepard come alive. Slowly, at first; each change almost invisible. She watched the doctors checking, double checking, watched Shepard's heart monitor increase; so slowly that it was hardly perceptible, then faster and faster until no one could deny the vitality of that heartbeat, until it seemed as if people down in the street could hear it.

And her own heart was beating hard enough to punch a hole in her chest and her eyes burned (from lack of sleep, surely, not from tears) but she did not look away when Shepard slowly opened her eyes. She stared, because a small part of herself had not believed this was possible. Yet, here it was; Shepard, blinking slowly at them all, her gaze drifting from the doctors to Hackett to Miranda and Zaeed, before finally settling on her. Jack swiped at her eyes and bit her lip so hard that it bled.

"Easy, now," said one of the nurses. "You're safe."

"Can you hear me?" asked another doctor.

After a moment, Shepard nodded minutely, her pillow crinkling under her head.

"Can you speak?"

Her mouth worked for a few seconds before she managed to whisper 'yes'.

"Do you know where you are?"

"In a hospital," Shepard rasped. "I was hoping … you could tell me which one."

The doctor smiled, and Jack swallowed hard. Even though her voice was so weak, she sounded just as always, talked like always. For a moment Jack had been afraid that the Shepard she knew and loved was gone, and that a stranger would wake up instead. "This is Alliance Memorial Hospital in Vancouver. You've been unconscious for about six weeks. Do you remember what happened?"

Shepard's eyes grew dark, and Jack knew before she said a word that she remembered everything, everyone who had died, every world that had fallen, every defeat. She only nodded, pressing her lips into a tight line. Sensing a sore spot, the doctor resumed his tests.

"Do you remember these people?" the doctor asked carefully.

Now she smiled, and it seemed to Jack that her eyes were bright. "Of course," she whispered. Miranda made a choked sound halfway caught between laughter and tears, and Zaeed grinned wider than Jack had ever seen. She tried to smile too, but her mouth wouldn't work.

"Shepard," said Miranda, taking a careful seat beside her bed. "How do you feel?"

"Tired," Shepard rasped. "Sore." A pause as she took a breath, swallowed. "Glad to … see you all."

"Right back at you," Jack managed, affecting nonchalance. "You have any idea how boring it's been without you these last few weeks?"

"Am I supposed to feel bad … that you don't have anything better to do … besides moon around my sickbed?"

For one brief, shining moment, the hard knot that had formed in Jack's chest loosened slightly, and she felt as if she could breathe again. She felt that perhaps things weren't so bleak and hopeless, and the future wasn't anything to be feared. But slowly Shepard's smile faded and she looked up at them all, through them all, as if they hid the one she needed behind their backs. Jack knew the question before she even spoke, and her heart sank.

"Where's Kaidan?" said Shepard, so quietly that her hoarse voice was drowned out by the beeping of the heart monitor. "Where's the Normandy?"

A long silence passed before Admiral Hackett informed her that the Normandy was still missing. And the look on her face broke Jack's already broken heart.

* * *

_The third night, they eschew room service and venture to the restaurant on the ground floor. It's a challenge, because here they can't kiss in between bites, not without attracting attention at least. Yet, they do regardless. They are blatant, obvious. Shepard wears one of his shirts, and he's stolen her socks. They hold hands over the table, and she traces the lines of his palm with one finger. He presses his lips to the back of her hand, lightly as a sigh, and smiles when she shivers. They can't stop looking at each other._

_"We're making the waiter sick," Shepard says, grinning._

_"I don't care."_

_And he doesn't. His whole life has been predicated by caring too much and following rules, but here he feels exempt from expectation; indeed, perhaps even invisible from it. The cares of the real world exist on some other plane; here, there is only Shepard, and Chicago._

_"I don't either," Shepard says, and she takes a bite of her filet mignon, chewing with insouciant glee._

_He wants to tell her that he finds her adorable and beautiful, and that yes, those are two very different things and she manages both with aplomb, but he can't figure out how to put it into words, so he smiles and eats his dinner. These days he is constantly losing track of his words and thoughts, struggling to wrangle some connection between the two. But Shepard does not seem to mind; she is as comfortable filling his silences as she is with savoring them._

_He drinks her in. Shepard; at the center of his vision, smiling up at him, those deep eyes alight with laughter. The muted light of the restaurant catches in her fire-bright hair as she tucks a strand of it behind her ear. He's never noticed how graceful her hands are, and how beautifully they move as she speaks._

_"I think I saw the maids sneaking into our room just before we got in the elevator," she says, offhandedly._

_He groans; their room is a disaster. "Oh, god."_

_"They're going to think we've been raised by pigs."_

_"You know, pigs are actually very clean animals. Very intelligent. They're careful to keep where they eat and sleep clean, and they bathe in mud to keep cool, because they can't sweat."_

_She shakes her head, but can't bite back the smile. "You know the most ridiculous things."_

_"Pigs are not ridiculous. They are noble, delicious animals."_

_"You know what's ridiculous?" she retorts. "YOU."_

_"Ouch."_

_She tries gamely to keep a straight face, but her lips twitch and soon she's laughing; not because he's particularly witty or interesting, but from the pure pleasure of being able to speak without reserve or restriction. He has to be careful not to get used to this, because in less than two weeks they'll have to return to the Normandy and resume their duties. They'll have to swallow these moments and act like their feelings don't exist. They'll have to nod and salute, and pretend that they are comrades in arms, but little beyond that._

_"What?" she asks him, noticing his expression._

_He shrugs. "Just thinking."_

_"I can see that. About?"_

_"How nice this is. Just talking, the two of us."_

_Her face softens, and for a moment he can't breathe. She has no business being so lovely with so little effort. "It is nice, isn't it?"_

_He turns over a piece of steak fat on his plate. "I was thinking how much I'll miss this. When we have to go back."_

_He's instantly sorry for bringing it up, because the light goes out of her eyes, and her expression is troubled before she pulls it back together. "It's not like we'll never see each other," she assures him._

_"I know. It won't be the same, though."_

_She's quiet for a moment, studying him so thoughtfully that he shifts in place, still unaccustomed to the full force of her attention. Finally, she grins again. "Maybe we won't be able to do this whenever we want," she says, leaning close and pressing her lips to his, sweet as wine, as sunlight. "But I won't ever be far."_

_"Never, huh?" he says._

_"Never. On down times I'll be just a few decks away, bored out of my skull. Wanting nothing more than to talk to you."_

_"Just talk?" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, but she is not put off. Her smile grows coy._

_"Maybe more. If you play your cards right."_

_Kaidan doesn't think it'll be possible for him to be this free with his affections on duty, and he knows that Shepard knows this too, but here in this enchanted place, he likes to pretend._

_They leave a tip on their table and thread their fingers together, pushing out into the cool darkness of Chicago nighttime. He's ambivalent, but Shepard gets antsy cooped up in the same place too long. She cranes up to drink in the sight of the skyscrapers, each resplendent with a thousand lights. 'Like stars, almost' she says, and he is hopelessly charmed by the thought._

_"Though I wish we could see the real stars too," she says, casting another hopeful glance upward, but the sky above them is thick with an oncoming storm. Isolated raindrops splatter on the sidewalk._

_"Tomorrow, maybe."_

_"Hope it's not too long. It gives me a weird feeling, not being able to see the stars."_

_He looks at her. "Why?"_

_"Oh, I don't know," she shrugs offhandedly, like it's not important. He's noticed she does this whenever the conversation turns toward something personal and tender, as if she thinks her feelings and thoughts are a burden. "I grew up on a ship. You look out the window and there they are. Steady, constant. I mean, they aren't when you consider the physics, but that's how they seem to a little kid, anyways."_

_He likes thinking of her as a kid – what was different about her, what was the same. "That makes sense."_

_She smiles a little, pleased that he thinks so._

_They walk a few blocks south and loop around. When he wakes from this dream, he might be ashamed that they spent three straight days in bed making love, but now he thinks that the time they spend entwined is not enough, that it simultaneously satisfies and draws hunger. They've walked the streets for only twenty minutes and already he wants her back in their room, laid bare on the bed, legs parted for him._

_She slows, watching the lights of the Drake winking through the fog. "Do you ever think about what it would be like if we met like normal people?"_

_"We're not normal people?"_

_She elbows him. "You know what I mean. If we met like civilians."_

_He does think about it, sometimes; how much easier things would be if they weren't fettered by Alliance regulations and protocol. "Sure," he says. "Maybe we'd have met on a street like this."_

_"On_ this  _street, maybe," she says, playing along. "We each turned a corner and crashed into each other, and you, being a handsome gentleman, helped me pick my things off the ground."_

_"And I'd say 'are you all right, ma'am?'"_

_"Oh my god, you would not call me ma'am."_

_"I would! It's polite, after all."_

_She grins. "Fine. And I'd say 'yes, thank you, handsome gentleman. Perhaps we could walk a ways.' And we would only talk about very boring, silly things; nothing weighty or dangerous."_

_"All right; nothing weighty. I would be enchanted from the start."_

_She cranes up to look at him, delighted. "You would, now?"_

_"Of course. Fascinated, beguiled. Not every day you meet a woman more interested in watching the stars than where she's going."_

_"Oh, you're never going to let that go, are you?"_

_"Never."_

_"Fine. I wouldn't be enchanted from the start. Interested, perhaps. Not every day you meet a handsome gentleman who can manage to be appropriately contrite when he crashes into a stranger."_

_"Well, I like to think I was raised right."_

_"I like to think so, too. And I'd be very interested, as the state of manners in modern society is abysmal."_

_He smiles. "We'd talk all day, and through the night. We'd walk through the whole city talking, and I'd learn things about you that you never told anyone else."_

_"I'd be surprised that I confessed these things to a total stranger, but fascinated, because something about you made it easier to talk about them."_

_He threads his arms around her waist and pulls her close, so that they are pressed chest to chest, only mere breaths apart. He can feel her shiver. "I'd ask 'Want to get out of here?'"_

_"Oh my god, no!"_

_"No?!"_

_"That's so cliché! And anyways, I'm not the type of lady that sleeps with a man on the first date."_

_"No?" he asks again, teasing her._

_"No, I'm not!" she insists. "But … maybe I'd say yes. Trying to be coy, trying to hide how thrilled I was that you wanted me."_

_"As if there's a chance in hell that I couldn't want you," he breathes, pressing his lips to her neck. She shivers again, though not from the unseasonable chill in the air._

_He is folding kisses into her temple when she angles into the path of his lips and kisses him deeply, locking her arms around his waist, pulling him closer still. He is breathless, here on this Chicago street, under the hazy nighttime sky. He is breathless when she captures his lower lip gently between her teeth. He is breathless when she whispers "Want to get out of here?"_

_He is thankful they are close to the hotel, and it is an easy thing to slip inside and file back onto the elevator. The concierge knows them by now, and Kaidan sees him roll his eyes at their display before the doors close. Then they are kissing again, more fiercely than before, more desperately. She frames his face between her hands and he pushes her into the glass as the lift bears them upward. He closes his eyes when she whispers his name. He doesn't know if they are still pretending to have only just met, or if now she is thinking of how different things are, how much sweeter it is to kiss after earning it. He doesn't know this dream from life._

_He closes the door behind them and reaches for her, but she holds up her hands to stop him. "You'd be slow," she whispers._

_His reply is a breathy growl. "Would I?"_

_"Yes," she says, taking a step back, smiling when he grabs for her. "You wouldn't want to scare me away."_

_"You wouldn't be scared."_

_"Even so."_

_So he is slow. He cups her face and kisses her once, and again, each one a question. He slides his hands up her shirt, chasing over the soft expanse of her belly, testing the weight of her breasts. He pulls at the waistband of her pants as slowly as he can bear, though his desire is like a battering ram, and he wants nothing more than to be desperate, to be rough, because he wants her to see how badly he needs her._

_"You'd let me undress you," she whispers in his ear._

_He swallows, though no amount of swallowing will quell the heat in his cheeks. "Civilian you would be able to handle that, huh?"_

_"With aplomb."_

_And she does. Her fingers are light as a sigh, and somehow still teasing. She pulls his shirt over his head and slides her hands over his bare chest when she is finished, reversing at his shoulders before trailing down to hover just at his waist. He is so unbearably aroused by this that she sees, and her lips curve into a grin. Her cheeks are bright when she eases him out of his pants._

_"You'd be impressed," he says, teasing._

_"Would I?"_

_"Undoubtedly."_

_Her cool hands curl around his cock, sliding over and back, and again, so tortuously slow that he shudders. "I suppose I would be," she breathes. "I was."_

_She's never said as much before, and though it's not really something he can control, he is still pleased; even more so when she presses her lips to the head before taking him whole in her mouth. He braces himself against the wall and leans his head back, shudders rippling through him as her tongue glides along the length of him, and for the fifth time that night he is completely breathless. "Shepard," he gasps._

_"You'd only ever call me Sam," she says, looking up at him, and the sight of her on her knees in front of him, his cock in her hands, makes him weak._

_"I'd … fuck. Only call you … whatever you want."_

_He feels her smile before she swallows him again, and the dark hotel room shivers, bends like light in a prism. It occurs to him to wonder where she learned to do such amazing, fantastic things with her mouth before he feels her tongue on the head of his cock, and he loses the power of coherent thought altogether._

_He holds her back before she can finish him off. "You'd do that on the first date, huh?"_

_She stands and smiles, pressing her naked body to his, and he thinks that the mere touch of skin against his has no business being so amazing. "I'd be overwhelmed. Caught in the moment."_

_"I would be, too," he whispers. "I'd do this." He takes her in his arms and lays her down on the bed, overcome with the mad urge to bury himself deep. He parts her legs and kneels between them, his hands sliding up her stomach, cupping her breasts. Her eyes close. She arches – her back curling gracefully, the muscles of her belly pulling taut._

_He presses the head of his cock against the wetness between her thighs, but she squirms away. "You wouldn't just dive right in." She smiles at the pun. "You'd kiss me first."_

_"Where?"_

_She taps her knee, and he kisses her there. There's a scar on her left one, reaching halfway down her shin. He kisses that too, trailing his nose against the tender skin. She taps her thigh, and he is only too happy to oblige her. She shudders when he traces his tongue in circles there, drifting closer and closer to the apex between her thighs. She taps her hipbone, her ribcage, her space between her breasts, her left shoulder, her right ear, the hollow at her neck, and he kisses them all. His hands wander. He only senses the softness of her skin, the sound of her breathing growing heavier, more desperate. When her hands curl around his thighs, he feels it in some deep place._

_"You wouldn't wait anymore," she whispers._

_And he obeys, because he knows he wouldn't. This is not the first time they've made love – indeed, it's not even the first time they've made love today – but somehow it feels new regardless. Perhaps the game has become real, and he can almost convince himself that this is not Shepard lying beneath him, gasping his name, but Samantha the civilian, and everything had come to pass exactly like they pretend. He slings her leg over his shoulder and drives deeply, so deeply, and she throws her head back into the pillow. She moans his name, and he marvels at the way it sounds on her voice as she comes, as she shudders so powerfully around him that it makes him shudder too._

_"You'd … you'd … oh, god," she moans as he thrusts into her, gripping her buttocks so tightly he can feel the muscles shifting under his hands. When he comes, it takes him a long time to come down._

_After, they lie in bed, limbs entangled. She rests a hand on her breast, and on impulse he lifts it and presses her palm to his lips, savoring the feel of her pulse; beautiful proof that she is real and alive, and that this is no dream._

_"After, I'd sneak out," she says, offhand, yet still breathless._

_He props himself up on his elbow. "You'd leave me after that?"_

_"I'd have to," she says, and there is an odd note in her voice. "Civilian Samantha wouldn't know what to do with you. She's almost as much of a coward as me."_

_He pulls her close. "You're no coward," he breathes into her hair._


	7. Chapter 7

Shepard's return to the world of the living was slow.

In those first days, she would wake for brief stretches of time, always surrounded by an assembly of doctors and nurses, tapping diagnostic details on their datapads and watching her every shallow breath, every slight twitch of muscle. They smiled when they looked down at her, their eyes uniformly bright and tender as if she was an incalculably precious resource. They did not touch her beyond the scope of their ministrations, but their regard was so fervent that it seemed physical, a corporeal presence in the room.

It occurred to Shepard that this was the only way they could show their gratitude. For her strange dreams had possessed a measure of truth: the Reapers were gone, and the galaxy was saved.

She assembled the details piecemeal; from her caretakers and brief flashes of the news – her only windows to the world from her hospital bed. Comms and relays were nonfunctional. Millions of refugees wandered the ruins of Earth, clearing rubble, rebuilding cities and homes, searching for their families. The fleets that remained slowly repaired the comms and relays. What remained of the Alliance was in the process of electing a new Parliament.

One slow, aching day she saw a news spot exclaiming to the world that she'd woke from her coma. The reporter stood outside what she realized was her hospital, as close to her window as the Alliance guards would allow, and spoke breathlessly into her omni-tool. The camera panned over the crowd of celebrating people, pressing their hands to posters plastered with her face, touching them reverently as if she were a god among them. She saw people laughing as they wept, and their joy struck her as incongruous.

Only six weeks, they said, yet in those six weeks she had been as close to death as one can go, and as far away from the world of the living as one can be and still live. Six weeks had passed since she'd destroyed the Reapers, since she'd woken briefly on the broken Citadel and watched the stars spin over her head. Six weeks had passed since she'd last seen Kaidan.

 _I'll see you on the other side,_ she told him as he bled, as he clung to her hand at the beam, tightly as though she would vanish the moment he turned his head.  _It won't be for long._ But he had vanished instead, and she had lied. She didn't have the right to make a promise like that, standing ankle deep in ash and blood, at the edge of battle. She should have known better.

There was a baseline hum of loss that filled her waking thoughts and dreams alike as the days passed half-alive in her hospital bed, that tempered each labored movement with hurt. Years ago she'd learned of a condition called phantom limb, where the missing limb would throb even after being amputated, so that you could almost believe it was still there if your eyes were closed. Shepard possessed all of her limbs, but she understood this pain; all that remained of Kaidan was the ache of his absence.

"We're going to find the Normandy," Miranda assured her, touching her hand briefly before pulling away, perhaps startled by how cold her skin was. "It won't be long." She left his name unspoken.

"Right," Shepard whispered. Miranda meant her promise – she was notoriously tenacious when it came to them – but Shepard had become well acquainted with impossible vows. She knew the sound of them, the way they lingered dead in the air as if made of smoke.

The news that Commander Shepard had woken from her coma spread through the galaxy much faster than should have been possible considering the state of the comm systems. Only a few days had passed before the gathering of admirers became a ravening crowd, summoned by the news, desperate to thank their savior, the woman who had ended the Reapers. At night she could hear them; no longer yelling but whispering, yet the vibrant thread of hope made their words loud. Even the Alliance detail stationed at every entrance and exit, keeping the crowd one hundred feet back at all times, could not resist the infectious mood.

The hospital staff tried their best to give Shepard space, but they were not prepared to deal with the tenacity of the reporters, who cheated, lied, and stole their way into the hospital to capture holoprints and soundbytes with ruthless efficiency. The entire system knew it, now; their savior was alive.

Shepard did not feel alive. Once again her body was a hated stranger, though unlike those days after Lazarus and her resurrection, now she didn't even have the comfort of functioning. She was pinned by legs that could not run, hands that shook weakly, lungs that struggled to accommodate breath. She was strung together not by bone and muscle, but by pain that rose and fell in waves, that rendered her helpless on that hospital bed.

She alone knew what had transpired that star-spun day on the Citadel, and her survival seemed like a cruel joke. It didn't help that her doctors couldn't seem to explain it either. "By all rights, you should have died," one said as he scanned the datapad listing her extensive injuries.

"So why didn't I?"

The doctor shrugged, smiling. "Maybe somebody up there likes you."

"That's not an acceptable answer!" she snarled, abruptly furious.

Finally, the doctor looked at her, and she hated the solicitude in his eyes. "Maybe you were meant to live, Commander."

She stared at him incredulously. She couldn't even eat with her own hands; instead, the doctors pumped her body full of nutrients intravenously. Though this didn't keep her stomach from aching at odd times, so much so that the staff had to leave a bowl at her bedside so she didn't vomit all over herself. Nurses moved her useless arms and legs to keep the muscles from atrophying, though doubtless they had done so already. They changed her bandages and bathed her, speaking to her in low, gentle voices, politely looking away when her eyes filled with furious tears. Who could call this living? She wasn't alive, not like she had been. Before she could run a mile in five minutes with two hundred pounds strapped to her back, then run another thirty. She could shoot the head off a pin at nearly one hundred fifty meters. She could jump, fight, make love. She could bathe herself without the assistance of a nurse.

"Be patient," he was saying, drumming his fingers on the datapad. "Your injuries were extensive, and they will take some time to heal. But you  _will_ heal, Commander; I promise you that."

She swallowed the bitter words burgeoning at the back of her throat and forced herself to nod. "Thank you, doctor," she said stiffly.

As she watched him nod and step back into the hallway, she felt an unwelcome twinge of guilt. Her situation was not his fault; indeed, he and his staff were doing everything they could to put her back together again, despite the difficulty of the wounds and the character of the patient. She despised being cared for, but she was going to have to deal with it.

The days passed punctuated by odd lurches and leaps forward, only to slow to crawl. Her dreams played behind a translucent curtain, always featuring Kaidan – strong, steady in battle, his hands sliding over a woman that looked like her, but strong in equal measure, skin unblemished, limbs unbroken.

He was alive, she told herself. Missing did not mean dead. Somewhere, in some safe pocket of the galaxy, he was standing on the bridge of the Normandy, his arms crossed over his chest, giving orders in the steady voice he used while on duty. Somewhere, he was looking for her. He had to be.

She wondered if he'd ever recognize her.

The fourth day after she woke, she was visited by Admiral Hackett. She'd been warned beforehand, thankfully, and the hospital staff managed to corral the waiting visitors away from the grounds, wrenching shut curtains and sealing windows. A tech even came by to sweep for bugs, which was prudent considering the underhanded tactics of the paparazzi.

Hackett slipped into her room, careful to close the door behind him before taking a seat at the side of her bed. He looked much older than she remembered, diminished and impossibly weary, like he hadn't gotten a good night of sleep in a few decades. There were lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth that she didn't remember, and even the scar seemed faded – no longer a vibrant red slash but a pale thread, stitched to grizzled skin. Only the blue of his eyes maintained its familiar fire.

"Admiral," she rasped, bringing her hand to her brow in a weak salute.

It was an appeal to speak as superior and subordinate and not old friends, but Hackett shook his head and closed his eyes. "Shepard," he said, in a voice she much remembered. "I confess I'm at a loss."

And she didn't know why, but her eyes filled with tears. "The feeling is mutual, sir."

"I don't think thanks are appropriate, considering all you've done for us."

She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood. "Thanks will do just fine."

He did not respond; indeed, it seemed as if words failed him. Careful to mind her IV, he took her hand and held it tightly, his cool fingers pressing into her palm. He'd done this only once before, though the circumstances could have not be more different. On the day Hannah Shepard died, the words left unsaid took the form of apology, or comfort – today, thanks was the stone on his tongue he could not move.

"Been busy?" she asked after a long while, when she trusted her voice to be steady.

"Of course," Hackett said, straightening. "Though, you know, you haven't missed that much."

"Haven't I?"

"No. It's been more or less what I expected."

She tried to grin. "That bad?"

But Hackett looked away, and an odd instinct nettled her. She stared at him unblinkingly until he folded with a resigned breath. "I told myself we weren't going to talk work today," he said quietly. "We were going to talk about what you wanted."

"I want to talk about work," she said, and her voice snapped with inexplicable temper. She took a breath, swallowed, pushed it away. It had no place in what was supposed to be a happy reunion. "Work is all I have."

He looked so sad then that she instantly regretted snapping at him. "There's been trouble. With the re-elections."

"Of course there has." It was a bitter, worldly, seasoned thing to say. But in her most secret heart of hearts, she couldn't deny the odd leap in her chest, signaling awful joy at the prospect of something to do, something to accomplish, for the love of God, anything at all. "Have there been problems?"

Hackett nodded. "Now that the Reapers are gone, we've got people trying to take advantage of the situation. There's been heavy resistance to the official reformation of the Alliance and the Council."

"You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

It was human – or sentient – nature, she guessed. The Catalyst had said as much. And yet it was still upsetting to hear. "You'd think they'd wait just a bit, while we all catch our damn breath."

"That would be sporting, wouldn't it? No open violence yet, though if we don't get a handle on it, it's only a matter of time."

"Who are they? What the hell do they want?"

"Civilians and some veterans, if you can believe it. They're claiming the government was responsible for our losses against the Reapers and we should have done more. They're demanding every surviving government and military official be stripped of their positions so new ones of their choosing can be installed."

"What- what more should we have done, exactly? What more should  _I have done?!"_ she spluttered, and beside her the heart monitor squawked in reply, an absurd punctuation to her distress. "How does gutting the government and military make any sense considering the state of things?!"

"It doesn't," Hackett said levelly, almost soothingly. "These crazies are in the minority. It'll likely blow over in a few months."

She arched a brow. "You don't really believe that."

"Maybe."

He wasn't going to say it. He was going to force her to ask, and suddenly she felt a surge of helpless frustration that came from nowhere. Suddenly she was six again, finding ways to be helpful and strong, so afraid of being forgotten, or worse, useless. "What do you need me to do?"

He flinched slightly like she'd struck him, and it took him a moment to compose himself. "We need you to get well."

She waved that aside, as though it was a given, because she could not face the alternative. "Right, but after that."

Hackett watched his hands, clenching and unclenching, tense then loose, flat against his legs. "Get well, Shepard. Show the world you're all right. They could use some good news."

"That can't be all."

"Shepard –"

"Commander," she bit out, near tears.

He was quiet. "I have no assignment for you, Commander."

Heat rushed to her face. Her hands shook. She wasn't Commander or even Shepard; she was a broken, lonely woman lying on a bed, too weak to care for herself, too stubborn to admit the man she loved might be dead, too heart-sore to admit that her only true aspiration in life was to be helpful, useful – needed. She turned away. "Thanks for taking the time to visit, sir."

As a military man, Hackett knew when he was being dismissed. He stood slowly and exited the room without another word, though before he passed over the threshold he turned back to look at her one more time. She stared pointedly at the perfectly painted wall, in a perfectly inoffensive shade of eggshell, and swallowed her tears.

* * *

James rarely had the opportunity for reverie; he lived fast and hard, and the lifestyle he cultivated did not allow for navel gazing. Not that the loss bugged him all that much, truth be told. But the night before the Normandy departed for Earth, as the rest of his crewmates celebrated around a bonfire they'd built on the beach, he found himself thinking.

Remembering.

Nothing major, of course. Nothing bad. It would be bad luck to ruminate on a lifetime of bad shit before their departure. No; instead, he thought of Earth. He thought of San Diego as he'd known it – blacktop shimmering, rapid Spanish, his  _abuela_ slaving at the stove over breakfast, her steel grey bun bobbing as she sang with the radio, the rip-rumble of his  _tío's_ ancient Chevy at six in the morning. Crammed in a desk too small, looking up at the sky while his teachers droned on. Cornflower blue to deep black, dotted with stars. As a snot-nosed kid, he'd felt too small for the world; it figured that he'd come around full circle, yearning for that pale dot in a sea of darkness, so small and yet so vast.

The flames leapt high, curling like lashes, the sparks dancing above like fireflies before vanishing into the night. He shifted from foot to foot and watched the imprints he left in the sand, and took a measured sip of the beer procured for the occasion.

Behind him, Esteban clapped him the shoulder. "I gotta say, Vega; it's a little weird not to see you in the thick of things."

James shrugged, watching a very giggly Traynor sloshing beer with the engineers. "Eh."

"Seriously. Are you sick? Dying? Are you really James? You got any wires poking out anywhere?"

James rolled his eyes. "Maybe go easy on the  _cerveza,_ Esteban. We're going to need you on your shit tomorrow."

"Like I need to be drunk to give you a hard time."

"No, but it probably helps." James grinned. "Glad to see you still know how to have fun."

"I'm going to ignore that and find another beer," Esteban said, and he waved vaguely. "Do me a favor and do the same, Vega."

James waved him off. "Sure, sure. Get out of here, you lush."

He watched Esteban totter off in the direction of the cooler, half sunk in the sand, surrounded by chatting crewmen. Someone had dug up a portable stereo and perched it right next to the drinks, which James anticipated ending in disaster before the night was done. But at the moment, it played a tune he remembered hearing in Purgatory at an eager volume, loud enough that any wildlife in the vicinity had taken cover long ago.

It was nice to see people celebrating, James decided, even if he wasn't exactly in the mood for it himself. Undoubtedly, they had a lot to celebrate.

"Lieutenant." He jumped at the voice, but it was only Allers. She came to a stop at his side and activated her omni-tool, fixing the party in front of them in her camera's gaze. Only after she'd set everything up did she smile at him. "Not going to say hi?" she admonished.

"Didn't want to ruin your footage."

"Don't worry about it. I can edit out your voice later."

"Fair enough." He watched her as she worked, her slim fingers moving quickly, skillfully. "Not in the mood to participate either?"

She smiled, a little mysteriously. "Just thought I'd get this on camera."

He considered her for a moment, and he found himself appreciating her focus, the tenacity in which she captured everything, even things he thought were simple or boring. "You know, I always see you working. Do you ever take a break?"

She looked up at him. "What exactly would I do with a break?"

"I don't know," he said, shrugging. "Relax, have fun?"

Her smile became coy. "Is that an invitation?"

"Nope." Not like he hadn't thought about it on kind of an abstract level, but that had to do more with the fact that he hadn't had sex in a longer time than he cared to admit, and less to do with anything singular or attractive about her.

She sighed. "If I want a job when we get back to Earth, I'm going to need to have something they can use. And you better believe they'll be able to use the Normandy's daring journey back home."

"You figure?"

"Sure. Think about it." Her voice dropped to a dramatic hush. "The brave Commander Shepard's ship Normandy, stranded on a distant world after that final battle. Crippled and broken. The relays are down, rescue is impossible. Hopeless. Yet the brave crew puts her back together and sets out for home anyway, even though it might take years, even though we might never make it back. People are going to want to see this story."

"And if we don't make it back?" he asked, unable to help himself.

"Then whoever finds the ship centuries later is going to see our bitter end. Either way, I'm getting our story out there."

James watched one of the engineers topple over, spilling their beer all over the sand. "I guess I don't get what's so important about it in particular. It's going to be endless days of doing the same thing over and over. People are going to get stir crazy. They'll be fights. People getting up in each other's shit. You think that's going to be some uplifting can-do story?"

"Maybe not," Allers said, "but it'll be honest."

"Right."

"I mean it. People are going to want to hear about the Normandy. They're going to want to see firsthand that broken things don't stay that way. It'll give them hope."

He had to admit, she had a point. "Maybe."

She grinned again. "Besides, what's an uplifting story without a bit of trouble?"

James was about speak when Allers held up a hand for him to be quiet, nodding toward the front of the party, where Kaidan was digging for a beer in the cooler. "Speech!" yelled one of the engineers, jostling the Major in the ribs, and soon the whole crew was chanting at the tops of their voices. Kaidan tried to graciously wave them off, but the chanting only intensified, louder and louder until he held up his hands for quiet with a modest smile.

"I don't have much to say," he began, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. "But I'd have done you all a disservice if I didn't tell you how … well, proud I am. Of you all. Every single one of you pitched in and made sacrifices without even being asked. You put in long hours, didn't complain, and what's more – you didn't give up hope. Even I've had trouble with that one."

For a moment, Kaidan looked like he wanted to say something else – something hard, going by the sudden rawness in his eyes – but the moment passed. "Anyway. We've done it.  _You've_ done it. Tomorrow, we're Earth bound."

A cheer rose up, and Allers shot James a smug glance. He sighed. "Fine. Maybe one day that's going to be a good bit of TV."

"There's no 'maybe' about it," Allers fired back, fiddling with her omni-tool in a self-satisfied manner. "I'm very good at my job."

"And so modest, too."

"Among other things." She gazed at him appraisingly, her eyes trailing over his arms and chest before flicking up to his face, and there was a definite note of hunger there. "I could show you."

He couldn't keep from chuckling. "Not like I haven't thought about it, but you'd probably have better luck if I was drunker. Or lonelier."

"That could definitely be arranged."

"Maybe. But not tonight."

She grinned. "Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind."

"Right." He nodded toward her camera. "Make sure you wipe that part, otherwise the whole galaxy will find out how well you take rejection."

"Am I being rejected?" she smirked, fiddling with her camera. "Have a nice night, Lieutenant."

He watched her saunter back to the Normandy before disappearing into the hatch, her mobile camera trailing behind, its single, bright eye flashing in the darkness.

* * *

"So I put my head down and charge. I don't think I'd ever run that fast in my life; like I could actually feel my face flapping," Jack said, pressing her flat palms on her cheeks and pulling, so that her features were strung taut. "Like being in an air tunnel."

Shepard smirked. "You are so full of shit."

"Fuck you! It's the biotics; they can make you do some crazy things."

"That's not even possible. Your bones would liquefy."

"Obviously it's possible, because it happened and I'm sitting right here."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Fine. You broke the sound barrier under your own power. Continue."

"Well, it's kind of boring after that," Jack said, reclining in the chair beside Shepard's bed and crossing her arms over her chest. "I beat the tar out of the lying sack of shit. I dumped what was left of him in the market, right in front of the people he ripped off. Got kind of ugly after that."

"See, but that was still good. It's not like you beat him up for the fun of it."

Jack frowned. "Doesn't mean it was good, either."

But Shepard – curse her – wasn't fooled. Her wan face pulled into an expression that managed to be both smug and understanding. "You like to pretend you're some big hardass, but you're not."

"What do you know?" Jack muttered, but secretly she was pleased. This was the first time she'd seen Shepard approach anything resembling animation in days. It had taken some doing – coming by regularly, treating her as if nothing had changed, as if she wasn't laid up in a hospital, in pieces and in pain.

Jack wasn't surprised by Shepard's despondency; if anything, she'd expected it. Girl scout's like Shepard were used to being active, to doing things and being useful. Figured a woman like her wasn't going to react well to being stuck on her ass day after day. Not to mention Jack figured she was in a lot of pain, and that definitely didn't help matters.

She wasn't really cut out for this caring thing. Her idea of TLC was a trip to the local bar and a rowdy fight with its patrons. Probably the only reason she spent so much time in this shitty hospital was because she owed Shepard her support. How else was she going to get better?

"You think you could spring me?" Shepard asked later, trying to make her hoarse voice light. Behind them, the news played on.

"Very funny."

"I'm serious," Shepard said. "You're always talking about going pirate again. Grab a wheelchair and get me out of here."

Maybe a year ago Jack would have leapt at the chance. But a year ago, it had been impossible to think of Shepard as she was now: bed-ridden, healing, but still broken. "Soon," she said, attempting her jackal's grin.

But even though she hadn't said no directly, Shepard deflated, her expression faltering as she seemed to crumple against the pillows. "Soon, then," she said, her voice remote. "I'll hold you to that."

"Shepard, come on," Jack said, leaning forward. She thought of insisting that Shepard wasn't going to be hurt forever, that she'd heal and get back to being her girl scout self faster than she thought was possible, that bones healed and pain faded; she was proof enough of that. But instead, she fiddled with a loose thread in her pants and pressed her lips together, and an odd fear bubbled up faster than she could swallow it. "I wouldn't know what to do if … I mean, I'm not a fucking doctor. I wouldn't be able to help."

"Never mind," Shepard said. "Seriously. Don't worry about it."

Don't worry about it – ha! It seemed like all Jack did these days was worry. Though she'd sooner swallow her tongue than admit that. "I bet you anything you'll be back on your feet by the time the Normandy gets back," she said, trying to be bright, trying to rouse Shepard from her mood.

And though Shepard still seemed impossibly small and pained in her hospital bed, one corner of her mouth perked. "You think, huh?"

"I know."

"How's that?"

"Because I know you. Antsy little shit," Jack said, grinning. "You'll heal from sheer force of will. Or spite."

"Spite!"

"Yeah, that's what I said. Don't pretend you're not thinking spiteful thoughts at your poor old broken bones."

"If you call me old again, I'll punch you in the throat."

"Careful there, old lady. Wouldn't want to give yourself the vapors." Jack leaned close. "How's that throat punch coming?"

Shepard somehow managed to be dignified, even in a hospital bed. "I didn't say when. But it's coming."

Jack opened her mouth to retort when the door opened and one of the doctors strode in: a woman in a pristine coat, her perfectly manicured hands curled around a datapad, her hair in a perfect bun, with not one strand out of place. Jack immediately stiffened defensively, but Shepard welcomed the woman with a wan smile. "Hello, doctor."

"Commander," said the doctor, returning the smile brightly. "I have to say, you're looking a lot better today."

"I'm feeling better," Shepard said, struggling to sit a little straighter. An errant thought crossed Jack's mind – what it would be like to live your whole life looking straight at everything, and how strange it would be to adapt to a new, supine perspective. "I think I'm ready to be discharged."

The doctor chuckled. "Not just yet, Commander. Though I do think you will ready to begin physical rehabilitation soon."

"How soon are we talking, here?"

Another ingratiating smile from the doctor. "Less than a week, if you continue to improve at this rate."

Shepard wasn't happy about this. "If," she echoed, frowning.

"I know the healing process can be long and frustrating, especially for an active person like yourself." Jack snorted – active didn't even cover half of it. "But it is a process, and it's not going to happen overnight."

"Maybe they'll figure that one out in the future," Shepard said, weakly attempting to smile.

"Maybe someday," the doctor agreed, before turning to Jack. "Now, would you mind coming back in a minute? I have something private I need to discuss with the Commander."

Jack's first instinct was to spit a retort at the woman so acid, it'd burn a hole in the floor. She did not like doctors, and she especially did not like bossy ones who smiled through their teeth and lectured Shepard about the  _process_ of healing like she was somehow mentally deficient. But Shepard spoke first: "She can stay," she said, reaching for Jack.

"Are you sure?" said the doctor in what Jack was sure she imagined to be a delicate tone, her disproving gaze roving over her tattoos and scars and murderous glare before flicking away.

"Yes," Shepard said firmly. "She's family."

Shepard had never said it before, and likely if she'd said it a year ago, Jack would have passed off her reaction with a barrage of cursing, the better to put some distance between herself and the way the word leaped in her heart, made itself a home there.

"All right," the doctor said, and her cloying smile disappeared. Suddenly, she seemed nervous, unbearably awkward, and the room became heavy with her discomfort. "I don't really know how to say this, Commander," the doctor admitted.

"It can't be that bad, if you're letting me start rehabilitation in a few days," Shepard said. Figured; even if she was feeling lousy and in pain, she'd bend over backwards trying to make things easier for others.

"I suppose it depends on you," said the doctor. "You're pregnant."

A ringing silence descended. There was a buzzing in Jack's ears, an odd rattle, growing so loud she only saw lips move, words tumbling soundlessly. She watched Shepard's easy expression freeze and shatter, her eyes widening, her mouth going slack, and in a dim part of Jack's mind she feared that Shepard was having a stroke. "What?" she whispered.

"You're pregnant," the doctor said again, and the she had the gall to sound apologetic after the unconscionable bombshell she'd hit them in the face with.

Shepard's throat worked violently as she swallowed. Her hands shook, and she pressed them flat against her thighs. "How?"

"Well … if you've been with –"

The silence shattered. "For the love of god, I know how it happened," Shepard snapped. "It shouldn't have happened. I was – we were careful. We took precautions."

Whatever ease the doctor possessed had completely disappeared; doubtless she struggled to bestow obviously unwelcome news to the Great Commander Shepard: War Hero, Savior, and now – Mother. "We did find traces of the contraceptive hormone in your bloodstream, Commander. As I'm sure you know, there are instances of failure."

"When I got the damn implant, they told me the failure rate was negligible," Shepard said, eyes hard. "That was the exact word. 'Nigh on impossible,' they told me."

"They should not have told you that," the doctor said softly. "You're ten weeks pregnant. You still have time to decide, but it is something we must address soon."

Shepard blinked. "Decide?"

"If you decide to … terminate," the doctor said delicately.

Shepard did not agree, nor did she disagree– she only stared, her wide, pitted eyes blinking the harsh light away. It was unwanted, a parasite! - yet already it'd claimed a place, beneath her heart.

That did it. Whatever rictus had frozen Jack's limbs shattered, and she lurched unsteadily to her feet. "I, uh, just remembered …" she trailed off lamely, her voice grotesquely rasping, her hands clenching into bludgeon fists. She burst into the hallway in a half-sprint, blindly pushing past doctors and nurses and patients, her heart hammering at her chest, her pulse thudding in her ears. Pragia disappeared behind similar panicked memories, and they ended under her desk, limbs pulled tight to her chest, her shaking hands crammed over her ears. Stupidly, she mourned the loss of that fucking mudball – where would she hide now?

 _She's family,_ Shepard had said. Not anymore.


	8. Chapter 8

Kaidan took a slow, even breath, then another. He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled himself straight; shoulders back, chin high. Somewhere in his throat he could feel his heart beating. There was a posture one adopted when commanding a vessel, and now – at thirty-six years old, and after thirteen as an Alliance serviceman – did Kaidan have the chance to try the posture on for himself.

Belatedly he realized that he was mirroring Shepard's own stance, one he'd seen her affect since those early days, on the SR-1, and the realization struck him like a physical blow.

His shoulders dropped. He leaned forward and spoke into the comm: "All personnel … prepare for flight systems check."

* * *

After Jack and the doctor left, Shepard was overcome by an elemental stillness. She did not think of the baby, or Kaidan. They were not real. They were ghosts. They drifted in a place so distant that they could not possibly exist. Shepard did not chase whispers, and lose herself in the dizzying spiral down, where they waited. Instead, she breathed.

She plotted.

When the doctors and nurses bustled in, she lay motionless. She winced in pain as they moved her limbs and bathed her and spoke about her condition. It wasn't a performance, not exactly – it was painful when they moved her, shifted her on that damnable hospital bed that had become her prison, the blankets wrapped around her body like chains. But aside from the pain, she played up the part of broken, injured war hero like a fucking professional. She spoke softly, weakly. She pretended to drift as they fretted over her charts, as if there mere act of keeping her eyes open was unbearably taxing.

She requested they draw the curtains of her room, so she could look into the hall, so she could watch the comings and goings on her floor – when the nurses changed shift, when the doctors swept through. "I feel like I'm in a prison cell," she said to one nurse, her tone warping the words into a joke, though at that moment she could have not been more deadly serious. The nurse laughed and did as she asked. Undoubtedly they thought the Commander's interest was benign, harmless.

They'd forgotten that nothing about Commander Shepard was harmless.

* * *

Later – hours maybe, or days: Shepard sat upright, pillows up to her neck, as a nurse set a tray down in front of her. What slim hope for a real meal died as she got a look at the spread; green jello, a cup of watery soup. "No chance of a cheeseburger, huh?" she asked the nurse, cajoling.

"Not for a while yet, Commander," said the nurse briskly. This one was a real hard case. "We're just going to stay on the safe side. Get your system used to food again."

"Of course," Shepard said. Smiled. Waited until the nurse left before letting the smile fall.

First thing she'd do when she got out of here was eat a cheeseburger as big as her fucking head.

* * *

Jack came later, skirting around the edges of the room. Days later, then. It took her a few moments to be able to meet Shepard's gaze. "You … doing all right?" she asked, tentative.

Shepard smiled placidly. "I'm fine," she said pushing away the flash of temper that coiled in her gut, always so close to the surface.

Jack said nothing, only looked at her like everyone did these days: like she was dying, falling apart, liable to shatter at the slightest suggestion of touch. Even the people she loved best in the world seemed to have forgotten that she engaged a Reaper on the ground, that she'd defeated Saren and his geth, that she'd stormed the Collector base and gotten every single one of her people out alive, that she'd held the breach at Elysium for forty-nine hours straight by her fucking lonesome, all while blinking a river of blood out of her eyes.

Jack clearly wasn't convinced, but she didn't press the issue. "Whatever you say, Ironsides," she said, one corner of her mouth pulling into a grin.

They chatted about weightless things, like the weather, the Council on their makeshift seat of power, the poor saps still camped outside, waiting for a glimpse of their savior. And as they spoke, Shepard considered her odd friend, legs slung over the side of her chair, picking at her teeth with one fingernail. Abruptly a wave of guilt curled her gut into knots. Jack didn't mean any harm – not to her, anyway. She cared. That was why she treated Shepard with kid gloves. That's why they all did.

She was sick of it.

"Stay out of trouble," Jack said before she left, offering a wave over her shoulder.

"Good one," Shepard said, but in the privacy of her thoughts, her resolve only strengthened.

_Not fucking likely._

* * *

Later still: she made her first gambit, to the nurse she knew was most likely to give her what she wanted. She was younger, with straight hair and wide, guileless eyes. She treated Shepard like she was made of glass, and the slightest disappointment would shatter her.

"Ashley?" Shepard called, and tried not to feel when the name sent a hot wave of shame rolling through her gut.

The nurse turned, fixed Shepard with her full attention. Those awful eyes – like the eyes of a child. "Commander? What do you need?"

"I was wondering if you could get me a wheelchair," Shepard said. "It's just, I want to be able to go to the bathroom by myself – just one less thing for you to do, right? Cleaning my bedpan, I mean."

"It's no trouble!" nurse Ashley said. "But you're right, Commander; we have to get you out of here one of these days."

"Exactly," Shepard said, and she smiled warmly. "You're the best."

Nurse Ashley blushed all the way up to the roots of her hair. She procured a wheelchair in less than fifteen minutes.

"You're an angel," Shepard said, and she smiled as brightly as she could, even though her eyes burned.

* * *

She practiced. She let the nurses and floor staff grow accustomed to seeing her scoot out of her bed, easing herself into the wheelchair, inch by aching inch. And god – it  _hurt._ Her arms shook under her weight, her legs dangled uselessly, hatefully, and every attempt to move them caused pain unlike any she'd ever felt. She stared down at them – so thin under the blankets, latticed with deep scars where they cut her open to set the bones, every inch of powerful muscle long since atrophied. She didn't recognize those legs. They belonged to another woman, a broken woman, not her.

Shepard stared so hard that her vision blurred. And her hands shook with fury.

That was the thing: fury made Commander Shepard strong. And Shepard was  _furious._

* * *

She didn't think in those immediate days. The moment her doctor said those words, an iron curtain came slamming down, quickly and viciously as a guillotine. She knew those words and the truth they illuminated lived on the other side, but she would not allow them entrance into her mind. As far as she was concerned, they did not exist.

Every waking moment was dedicated to her mission. Even her dreams changed; escape in the dark, and then soaring above, gliding over all.

* * *

First, she waited until after dinner. Arranged herself as best as she was able, though her limbs twitched with anticipation and phantom streaks of pain. She made her eyes heavy. Smiled blearily at the nurse, Suzanne. "Blinds down, tonight," she said, yawning. "Pretty worn out."

"All right, Commander," said Suzanne. Shepard watched her bustle around the room, checking her vitals, checking the IV. As she watched Suzanne, she allowed herself to enjoy a small bit of satisfaction at this first phase going off without a hitch when Suzanne's wrinkled hands closed on the handle of her wheelchair. The thrill shattered as Suzanne dragged it across the room, to the farther corner.

"W-what are you doing?" Shepard demanded. Her pulse crashed, roared.

"Oh, just getting this out of the way."

"I might need it. To go to the bathroom."

"Commander, you've been in and out of that old thing all day. Give your poor body a rest. Here," said Suzanne, with what Shepard was sure she imagined to be a benign smile, though on her doughy face it read more like smug satisfaction. "If you need to go, you have your bedpan."

It took every ounce of self-control Shepard possessed not to throw the bedpan in her face. "Thank you," she said stiffly. Hands locked into fists. Aching to hit.

"No problem at all, Commander. Sleep well." Smiling, Suzanne backed out of the room and closed the door. Shepard's own smile vanished in a snap. Her wheelchair – her fucking wheelchair, her salvation – all the way on the other side of the room. Facing the wall. And Suzanne's smug face, as if she had known Shepard's plan. As if she took great pleasure in foiling it before Shepard even had a chance.

Shepard considered waiting until tomorrow for half a second, but that moment passed and abruptly she was filled with furious resolve – a red-hot forge, spitting fire. This was not an inconvenience; this was a challenge. Whatever cruel force that governed the universe clearly thought she'd give up easily. Said force clearly did  _not_ know Shepard.

She took stock of her condition. Her legs were out – the left unbroken, but too weak from weeks of disuse, and her right in a walking cast the nurses had outfitted her with in preparation for therapy. Her core – weak, so weak … so pathetic! But her arms, yes; she could move them without pain. They were weak too, and she didn't think they'd be able to support her weight for long – but then again, she did not need them to.

Just long enough to get her across the room.

She waited; the last stretch of waiting after days of it – days! She focused on the silver flash of the wheels in the corner of her vision; winking streaks of light, like falling stars. She focused on the sounds outside her door; Nurse Ashley talking on the phone (likely to her mom), the hum of the machines, a baseline murmur of buzzing voices, from whatever telenovela now playing on the TV in the hallway. When she heard the door, she lay back and closed her eyes, and breathed so slowly that she might have been hovering near death, and whoever it was that decided to check on her was satisfied. Briefly, she thought of a man, rumpled in bed, his dark hair curling over his brow, his eyes on the TV, a flash of his smile, and how she ached to live in the space between his ribs, the warm embrace of his skin – and down came the guillotine.

She waited until exactly 3:36am. Near the end of the shift. Nurse Ashley would be dozing. The floor quiet as patients slept. Dreaming, or dying in their coffin-beds. Caught in the grey place between. Shepard's skin crawled, and a hot wave of nausea boiled in her gut, rushed up her throat, burning, a flame, she had swallowed a flame – and she only just grabbed the bedpan in time.

Her hands shook. It was nothing. A ghost. A story she heard, maybe – once, when she was a girl. It was a whisper at the back of her mind, struggling – She cut the thought off, vicious and full of regret, because it could take root and grow to such a size, and it would be monstrous to choke it, stuff it back, to the place of dreams where it belonged.

She extended her left hand and flexed, expecting the bright burst of orange to flare around her hand, but nothing came. "Come on," she hissed, flexing, her tendons stark. "Come on." This omni-tool had shorted the systems of a geth Prime on Rannoch, moments before it had blasted Kaidan and Tali to broken pieces. It had a specialized cryo-drone program installed, which she had used to great effect against Cerberus on the Citadel, James and Garrus at her side, calling out challenges like children, knowing full well that they weren't invincible but pretending anyway.

Invincible. What a lark.

"Please," she whispered.

And the omni-tool flashed to life, the buzz of it warm and welcome against her frozen skin.

Slowly, methodically, she tore a long strip off the bottom of her cotton gown and removed the IV, careful to keep two fingers pressed against the slim wound until she tied the cloth around her arm. She hacked into the monitors, installing a program that would keep them beeping at a heartbeat pace. She painstakingly pulled herself upright and slung her legs over the side of the bed. She hesitated, judging the force necessary, the best path to take: stealth, or speed? Her ears pricked; a yawn on the other side of the door, drowned out by the telenovela. Speed. They wouldn't hear her fall over the TV. Not if she fell right.

She slid her rear off the bed, inch by painful inch, until only her arms bore her weight. She hung suspended for a moment and then, with every ounce of force she possessed in her broken, useless body, she launched herself into the air.

For a brief, sunlight moment, she flew.

She came down hard on her side, the impact forcing the air out of her lungs in an awful, pitiful wheeze. Her arms and knees and chin throbbed where she'd landed on them, and she knew in a few hours dark bruises would bloom there, purples and blues circling spots black as pitch. She looked up and nearly groaned again; from her vantage point on the floor, the wheelchair seemed to be miles away.

But Commander Shepard was not daunted by distance or the effort required to close it. She'd dragged her broken, useless body across the Citadel, even as she bled out. Now, she dragged her broken, useless body across the floor of her hospital room, inch by excruciating inch, minute by endless minute, until it seemed as though she could go no farther; her arms would surely give out and the nurses would find her sprawled on the floor, clearly in an bid for freedom, and the thought of their offensive pity sent a hot rush of adrenaline spiking through her veins.

She crawled, nails scraping against the floor. Legs sprawled uselessly behind her. She flipped the wheel lock on the chair and gripped the bars, hard enough to crush the metal to dust in her fists. Tears of exertion and pain sprung from her eyes, tracking down her freezing face. She was so tired, and so weak, and everything hurt so badly that a sob welled in the back of her throat, but she swallowed it, shoved it back into darkness and dreams. She was greater than the sum of her broken parts. She dragged herself into the chair, and with one last soundless cry of effort, righted herself.

Before, Shepard would not have allowed herself to savor a half victory, not before a mission was complete, but at that moment sitting in the wheelchair filled her with such sweet exhilaration that she could do nothing else but sit motionless and let it fill her.

First, she peeked outside. Nurse Ashley dozed. The telenovela played on – a blonde woman swooning in the arms of a dark and handsome stranger, eyelashes fluttering. She could not see anyone else—no guards or doctors. She spooled up a program on her omni-tool and prayed she would not have to use it. She could sneak past the rest of floors if she could just get off this one. Find some clothes.

Nurse Ashley faced the TV. Her eyelids fluttered, then drifted shut. She heard nothing as the door behind her opened and closed, and as a small woman in a wheelchair sped down the hall, faster and faster, her ripped cotton gown fluttering around her knees as she flew.

* * *

Kaidan counted backwards from six thousand by multiples of twenty-seven. He timed his pulse, until it seemed to match the soundless blips on Joker's console. He persisted until he reached a state of meditative calm, so absolute that not even the destruction of the Normandy would shake it.

A memory came to him as he held his breath, waiting for the systems check to cycle complete. He had seen Shepard here so many times before, her red hair curling above her shoulder, standing as tall and straight as strength incarnate – save for the minute trembling of her hands, which never seemed to fully go away. He watched her watching the stars, for endless minutes, until she'd finally noticed him and turned. He remembered the way her eyes grew light, and how one corner of her mouth pulled into a small, tender smile – lopsided and unbearably beautiful.

He wondered where she was at this exact moment. If she was safe. He prayed that she was.

* * *

Shepard stole into the first uniform closet she could find. She shrugged into an oversized hooded sweatshirt that bagged around her thin frame, and jammed a knit cap over the unruly mess of hair that had only just started to grow out. She yanked a pair of scrubs up her legs and settled them over her bony hips. Before she escaped the closet, she fished out a pair of scratched sunglasses she found wedged under one of the shelves and pushed them up the bridge of her nose.

She peered into mirror and quickly judged that only someone who knew her very well would recognize her. The woman who stared back was emaciated, gaunt. Her cheekbones were sharp as shards of glass, jutting under skin so pale it was nearly translucent.

She looked down at her chrono. 4:45am. Had it really taken her an hour to get this far? She had to hurry, before the nurses changed their shifts, and the tired would be replaced by the alert.

But whatever luck she'd found at first vanished. As she peered out of the closet, she saw a handful of nurses traversing the halls, scanning datapads regarding their patients, sipping cups of coffee. Another odd pang – she hadn't had a good cup of coffee in months.

Shepard considered her options. She had never been trained in the infiltrator class, but she'd worked with some of the best. She tried not to think of Kasumi's outraged expression or the rebuke she was sure to earn the moment she next set foot in the hospital – "honestly Shepard. So pedestrian. Where's your style?"

Shepard rolled her eyes at imaginary Kasumi. She was breaking out of a hospital, not breaking into a vault during a swanky party. She didn't need style. She just needed out, preferably in a way that didn't do anything worse than mildly inconvenience the staff.

She could overload the fire suppression systems on this floor, but she didn't have enough time to ensure that only the units in the hallway would be affected. She was not the only patient on this floor, and she knew they would need the full faculties of the hospital. As badly as she wanted to escape, she could not justify doing anything to harm the other patients – veterans like her, civilians caught in the crossfire, people injured in the rebuilding efforts.

She heard footsteps advancing on her hiding place, and the idea came to her in a thrilling instant of inspiration. She activated her omni-tool and bypassed the security, her heart clanging, pulse thudding in her ears, fingers shaking as adrenaline coursed through her –

\- and suddenly surprised voices rang out. The sound of footsteps reversed quickly in the other direction; the nurse running toward the disturbance she had orchestrated. When she peeked her head out of the closet, she was met by darkness that stretched nearly half the ward. Light from the patients' rooms bled into the dark, and the glow of the monitors illuminated the nurses as they felt their way toward environmental control. For the first time in what seemed like years, Shepard smiled, and no one was there to see it. She wheeled herself out of the closet and to the elevator before anyone could catch a glimpse of her quick retreat. Just as the doors closed, she saw a burst of brightness as the lights flickered back on.

Sucking in a quick breath, she punched in the ground floor button, gripping the handles of the wheelchair so tightly that her knuckles creaked. She did not move or blink as the elevator bore her downward, so slowly – far too slowly. Had security seen her crawl across the floor of her room, her glacial pace as she dragged herself into the wheelchair? Had they seen her disappear into the uniform closet, only to reappear in darkness?

Suddenly she knew that they would be waiting for her once the elevator doors opened. In her mind's eye she saw their hands closing on the handle of her wheelchair, dragging her back to her cell, strapping her down to the bed this time, and a block of ice froze her gut. She acted without thinking: firing up her omni-tool, bashing her way past the environmental security firewalls as if they were toy blocks, triggering the fire suppression systems to overload in a spectacular fashion. There were no patients on the lobby floor, and weeks of resentment bubbled up in her throat, twitched in her fingers, made her pitiless. In that moment, she cared only for her goal. The rest of the world could fuck itself.

The elevator doors opened to chaos. Water poured torrentially from the suppression units. Voices rang out. Receptionists scurried for cover with armfuls of soggy paperwork and flickering datapads. And amid the bedlam, Shepard passed unnoticed – a small woman in scrubs and a sweatshirt, a knit cap absurdly askew on her head, a vicious smile on her face. She was soaked almost instantly, but she didn't care. She launched herself through the doors and into the night beyond.

She did not look back. Not for voices or sirens or the screech of tires, not for anything. She wheeled herself faster and faster until the chill clung to her wet clothes, froze against her skin, in her lungs. Soon she was hyperventilating, but all she noticed was that the cool air tasted so fresh, and that no matter how much she breathed she could not get enough. She propelled herself so quickly that it seemed as if the wheels did not touch the road, that instead she had sprouted wings. Oh, the speed of it! The sense that the world could not hold you, that instead you were meant to soar; it was as easy and precious to her as her mother, as the ship she'd commanded. And before her lay Vancouver, hopeful spires resplendent with light, cars honking and screeching, a million voices blending into some strident charivari, and above it a horizon touched with the barest suggestion of dawn. God, the sky! Spinning above her head were billions of fading stars, constellations she knew by heart, as familiar and beloved as any figment of childhood. Whatever else happened, they had remained, steady as mountains, beautiful as a song. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat and came out a sob.

Ashley's voice came to her then, from across a vast distance:  _"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable/ I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."_

 _"_ _What the hell is a yawp?"_ she'd wondered then; poetry was often lost on her. And Ashley, so bright in her memory, yet remote as the stars above; she had patiently explained: " _It's a cry that can't be held."_

So Shepard - flying over the flagstones, tears catching in the corners of her mad grin –took a breath and loosed her own barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

* * *

The first thing she did was order a cheeseburger as big as her head.

She had fond memories of James swinging by Admiral Angus' for a bag of burgers and sharing the bounty with her before the Reapers attacked – he technically wasn't supposed to, but they both had a weakness for fast food, and it had never taken much convincing to get him to share. They would sit in her living quarters and demolish a dozen burgers easy, while he brought her up to speed on current events. "For such a small lady, you sure can put them away," he'd remarked, and she flashed him a grin, cheeks stuffed with masticated burger. She didn't dare hope that Admiral Angus' would have been rebuilt in the weeks she'd been unconscious, yet after three hours of wandering rebuilt Vancouver, she saw the familiarly jaunty sign flashing in the early morning light, depicting a jolly man in dress blues with a massive burger in his plump hands. Her stomach rumbled.

She rolled into the restaurant and positioned herself in line behind an older man, fantasizing about the burger – the burst of flavor over her tongue, the texture of it – god, how many fucking years had it been since she'd enjoyed something as simple and delicious as a burger? – but as she watched the older man fish his wallet out of his pocket, she remembered that she had no money.

"Shit!" she hissed.

The man turned, perhaps alerted by the desperation in her tone. "Everything all right?" he asked, arching a brow. Clearly a friendly sort.

"Shit, I'm sorry," she said again, color rushing to her cheeks. A sudden flash of inspiration took hold, and she spoke before thinking. "It's just that I forgot my wallet at home."

Normally, she hated manipulating people to get what she wanted. Even with Kaidan – down came the guillotine. But she knew how she looked – a small, thin woman in a wheelchair, holding herself straight and proud like a veteran. He probably thought she was homeless, patting her pockets for change, trying to save face. The man's expression softened into pity, and a twinge of guilt settled in her stomach, made a home there. "I could help you out," he offered, smiling.

She was too hungry to argue. "You're a lifesaver, thank you."

He shrugged modestly. "Nah. We've all been there, right?"

"Right." She rolled herself to the counter and craned up at the menu, suddenly feeling like a kid in a candy store. She figured it would be rude to order one of everything, so she quickly narrowed it down to her favorite. "I'll have the number two," she said to the cashier. "Large, with extra cheese, onions, and mayo. Onion rings instead of fries. Do you have any of those honey mustard packets still? Okay, as many of those on the side as you can legally give me. And a large lemon soda."

She buzzed with anticipation, watching as the helpful stranger paid for their food and the cashier assembled their meal on the tray. She watched the cooks in the back grill the meat, the smell of it sizzling through the air, making her mouth water. Her mother could not abide greasy food, but she loved it, and Kaidan –

"Here we are," said the stranger as he set her tray on the table. "I'll leave you to eat."

Suddenly the thought of eating alone filled her with panic she didn't understand. "Hey! Uh, if you'd rather eat alone that's fine, but I wouldn't mind the company, if you don't."

"It's no problem," said the man, and he took a seat. " _Buen provecho."_

She grinned, reminded once again of James. " _Gracias, igualmente."_

_"_ _¿Tu hablas español?"_

She shook her head. "Not that well. I can understand some of it. Speak, not so much."

"Your accent is good; that's why I ask."

"I have – had a friend that was picky about it."

"Had?"

She shrugged, looking away. The high was wearing off, and the closet of thoughts beckoned from behind the blade of her mental guillotine, insisting to be felt, to be heard. Before he could say anything else, she unwrapped the burger and took an ambitious bite, and the high was back – the flavor bursting on her tongue, the nostalgia these crappy burgers inspired welling in her chest like a song, or a sigh. "Oh my god," she said, the words muffled by bits of burger. "I forgot how good these were."

"You forgot?" said the man.

She chewed, swallowed, flashed him a graceless grin. "It's been a while."

They ate in companionable silence. She watched droves of people eat and leave – a few teenagers ditching school, a family of four who piled their fries together on the tray, a father who had a miniature sword-fry fight with his ten year old daughter, an old couple that shared a piece of pie. She was struck by how normal it was, how average. Like any day from her memory – illuminated by spring sunlight, the newly budded trees casting dappled shadows on the pavement outside, shifting as the breeze caught in the branches.

Before the man left, she held out her hand to him. "What's your name?"

"Steve Garcia," he said promptly.

"Steve. In a few days, go to the Alliance Memorial hospital and give your name to receptionist up front. She'll have your money waiting for you, okay?"

He was shaking his head, an uncomfortable expression marking his clean-shaven features. "Please, that's not necessary –"

"I'd like to pay you back anyway."

After a moment, he nodded. "All right. In a few days, then."

An odd relief took hold, and she smiled up at him. "Thanks again for the meal, Steve. And the company."

She watched him leave, then turned back to her half eaten burger. Her stomach rumbled, clearly unaccustomed to the weight of food, and her arms had begun to ache from the mornings exertions, but she took another bite, chewing luxuriously – forcing herself not to remember people, but instead the sensations that accompanied them. Forcing herself not to remember James and his burgers, his easy Spanish and the way it rolled off his tongue, but the camaraderie they'd shared, the taste tempered by her yearning for freedom. She could manage that.

* * *

Shepard knew that a missing persons report typically wasn't filed until after twenty-four hours of absence, but she figured her status as a war hero invalid necessitated a different time frame. Just after two in the afternoon, she caught a report on the vidscreen just above the newsstand she was leisurely perusing.

The anchorwoman looked especially harried, and another phantom twinge of guilt twisted her gut into knots. "Commander Shepard has disappeared," she said breathlessly to the camera. "This morning she was ascertained to be missing from the hospital grounds." The program cut to Shepard's military portrait – featuring a Shepard at least twenty pounds heavier, her fire-red hair curling above her shoulders, her profile appropriately stern. In short, nothing what she looked like now. "Foul play is suspected at this time."

Shepard blinked. Foul play? Oh, for crying out loud. Did they honestly think so little of her faculties that the only way they could explain her absence was to invent some kidnapper to do the heavy lifting? What kind of crack moron had investigated the scene of the 'crime'? There would be no fingerprints aside from hers and the staff's. She'd been careful to tie off the IV, to keep it from dripping all over the floor. Her lips twisted; whoever was in charge of the report was going to feel incredibly stupid when she decided to go back.

And she didn't feel like going back for a long time, yet.

But the vicious thrill faded when she caught sight of another woman, standing at her side, her hands to her mouth. "I hope she's all right," the woman said, her voice tremulous.

Shepard stared at her. "Why do you care?" she blurted incredulously.

"It's Shepard," the woman said, as if the answer was obvious. "It'd be terrible if something happened to her, after all she's done."

It seemed like anyone who said her name added that to the end – after all she'd done, after all she'd done. On and on. As if the only thing to Shepard was what she'd done for the galaxy. She didn't know if she wanted that to be true or not.

Shepard did not want to feel guilty. She wanted to be free to break out of the hospital, free to leave the blankets and chains scattered on the floor, free to roam the city when she liked, do what she willed, run away from the things that frightened her. She wanted to be able to live as she pleased without affecting anyone else. The woman's sadness struck some deep place in her, and under her bright eyes Shepard suddenly felt three inches tall. "Maybe she decided to get some air," she said, uncomfortable. "Can't imagine a person like Shepard would want to be cooped up for so long, right?"

"I hope you're right," the woman said, gathering her purchases and walking away.

* * *

Shepard ignored the guilt. She shoved it behind the wall in her mind where the thoughts of those she'd lost lived, where they waited to break free. Instead, she rolled through the streets of Vancouver, marveling like a child; how new everything seemed, how fresh. Streets paved without a single crack, cars flying overheard with fresh paint glinting in the sunlight. New shops, people working. The clang of hammers on steel to the south, as construction firms set about building new residential districts. She thought about the people who would live there, the families high above the world, watching the city below through clear glass.

And beyond the limits of the city, she could sense spring in the air. The wet smell of dirt and rain, and of budding things.

The smell of new life.

Shepard swallowed. It had grown crowded in the space behind her guillotine.

* * *

That evening, she watched the sun set over English Bay. It had grown cold, and she'd never properly dried after her being drenched by the hospital's fire suppression systems, so her stolen clothes rubbed against her raw skin. Her arms and legs throbbed, and exhaustion coursed through her limbs, made her eyes heavy. But she forced herself awake, unwilling to return to her prison, unable to concede defeat.

The sun glinted on the surface of the water, catching the sleek windows of the new Alliance base on the other side of the bay, like a thousand diamonds embedded in blue silk. Above her the rip-rumble of Alliance ships filled the blood-red sky, and a new ache rose in her throat. What she wouldn't give to set foot on any ship, bound anywhere. Anywhere but here.

* * *

She avoided dives and bars – better not to arouse temptation, better not to confront anything she shouldn't do because of her condition. Instead, she wandered the dark streets of Vancouver – no longer gleaming in the sun but shining; two layers of stars, one above, one below.

Music bled through walls and windows, filled the cold air. She thought of another spring in a distant city, and the memory of it was like a fist to the gut, tight fingers crushing her heart. She remembered the touch of his hand at her waist and how gently he pressed her close, the strains of jazz in the smoky light, haloing them. She remembered how soft his lips had been when they brushed her cheek.

She pulled the hood tight around her face and adjusted the knit cap, the better to ward off the impossible cold, but it was to no avail – the wind cut right through the flimsy cotton of her sweatshirt, straight through to her bones, freezing her tears before they shed. And even still, she did not bend. She would not go back, to that place where she would be forced to remember, not under her own power. She would never go back.

* * *

Night passed above her, beyond her. Her head throbbed, and her stomach boiled over with grease and grief. She vomited, splattering the sidewalk and an unlucky corner of her scrubs. Her bare feet beckoned at her through the darkness, tinged blue. What an idiot she was – to forget shoes. What an idiot she was regardless.

She shivered, a bitter gargoyle frozen to her wheelchair, her face contorted in an ugly grimace. But it took energy to forcefully forget everything. It took energy to willfully seek distractions. It took effort to find an end, once and for all.

She heard shouts in an alley just ahead. It was not a conscious decision to propel herself forward; instead, an odd instinct moved her frozen, aching arms, pulled her level to the alley. She craned forward and peered into the darkness.

A man held a gun in steady hands, pressed it to the temple of a woman. She sobbed tearlessly, hands outstretched, fingers taut. The man fumbled at the buckle of his pants with one hand, and the woman jerked away, crying out. The man struck her across the face with the gun, hard enough that Shepard heard her nose break.

"Hey!" she shouted hoarsely. "Drop the gun and let her go."

The man spun wildly for the source of the disturbance. His eyes narrowed when he caught sight of Shepard – ridiculous and small and weak in her wheelchair. Some strung out veteran, probably, or a homeless cripple junkie. Nothing to worry about. "Get the fuck out of here," he hissed. "Or I'll splatter your brains."

"I'm not going to ask again," Shepard said.

He took aim, but he was too slow – far too slow. He'd hardly had time to put his finger on the trigger when a burst of orange erupted over her arm, illuminating her face from below like a candle in an empty skull, the angles of her bones jutting with violence he should have known to respect. She fired a pulse from her omni-tool and his rifle overloaded in his face, spewing sparks, burning him. He cried out, releasing the woman, and she was alive in that moment, she was  _strong –_ the biotics ripped across the alley and struck him square in the gut, and he flew, crashing into the wall before slumping over, unconscious.

Then; silence. The woman wrenched free of his strewn limbs and stumbled out of the alley on trembling legs. Bruises marred her face, one eye nearly swelling shut. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

"Are you all right?" Shepard asked gently. "Did he -?"

"No. You … found us first," the woman whispered. Tears tracked down her face.

Shepard nodded toward her arm. "Do you have an omni-tool?"

"Uh-huh."

"Go to that store across the street and call the police. Wait there, make sure you're around a lot of people. They'll come, get your statement, get you patched up. Do you think you can do that?"

The woman swallowed before speaking. "What if he wakes up?"

"He won't. But wait inside just in case, okay? They'll be here soon enough."

Finally the woman nodded. "T-thank you," she whispered.

But Shepard was already wheeling down the road, her heart beating madly in her chest – like war drums, like thunder, some primal sound and fury that she did not fully understand. She felt neither cold nor pain, now; she was furiously alive, strong as she had been before, powerful in a way that was uniquely hers.

The police arrived in minutes, and the would-be rapist was roused, cuffed, and shoved into the back of a police cruiser. A crowd had gathered, and they strained to hear the details of the crime and rescue as the woman relayed them – details of a mysterious woman in a wheelchair, who fought with skill and surety, who arrived just in time, who looked an awful lot like the missing Commander.

Shepard did not hear them. She raced through the streets, joy replaced by a mad, manic vigor. She watched her second sunrise on English Bay – too far gone to be cold, still thrumming with mad adrenaline and another emotion she could not place. Perversely she ached to find other villains, yearned to fight them as only a member of the Alliance could. She yearned to root through the dark corners of the galaxy for slavers and mercs, to bring them to justice. She wanted to recklessly charge through a swirling desert with guns blazing as the hot sun Bahak burned overhead.

These memories, she savored. Fighting, the solid feel of a gun in her hands, the certainty that burned in her heart – the only thing she was certain of. How good it felt to do good. How vital, how necessary.

She would do it. She would find a crew, buy a ship, steal a ship, whatever. She'd get off this planet full of painful truths and reminders. She'd get back to the only thing she knew how to do. Broken or not, she would find a way. She would –

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bright flash of plastic, coiled into the shape of a slide. A playground. Logically, she knew it was a perfect place for a park; the grounds were green and open here, and in the distance the surface of English Bay glittered, threw a pale reflection of the sun. Here, it smelled green and wet and alive – hard to believe a year ago husks had roved over the countryside, feasting on the corpses of the dead. A year ago, she had watched a shuttle burst into pieces, raining flaming metal on the water below. A year ago, she'd watched the boy with the spaceship die.

There it was – that odd leap, the gentle reminder of what burgeoned in her, and she struggled for her guillotine, struggled to shove those thoughts and truths back where they would not wound – but this time, there was no wall. This time, she could not hide.

She watched the children play. Screeching with glee as they careened down the slide, swinging madly from bars, propelling themselves higher and higher on the swings, as if they yearned to touch the sky. She watched a boy who couldn't be more than three years old, toddling through the grounds with a toy spaceship caught in his chubby fist, dark hair curling at the nape of his neck. He had brown eyes.

Here it was: her brutal, elemental truth. Kaidan was dead. And she was pregnant with his child.

A sob tore out of her chest, and she curled onto herself, arms crossing tightly over her stomach – over the little bean that grew there. And there, she cried.

* * *

The console flashed. Joker paused, his thumb curled over his finger, where he'd been rubbing it for the last twenty minutes. An odd shudder passed through him.

"Joker?" Kaidan asked.

A pause. Joker's hand splayed over the console; a concert pianist poised over the opening chord of a concerto. "All systems go," he said finally.

Kaidan swallowed. He thought of Shepard – every memory of her culminating to this exact moment, where he stood on the bridge of her ship and ordered it to fly. He thought of her wherever she was, and how she had taken the shape of a prayer, illuminated by hope alone.  _No matter what happens, we find each other._

"All right," said Kaidan quietly. "Take us home."


	9. Chapter 9

_An hour or so before sunrise, Shepard sits on the bathroom counter in their hotel room and watches Kaidan shave. The stubble darkening his jawline gives him a rakish look, as if he is a mere breath away from tossing her over his shoulder and carting her back to bed, the better to give her a good ravishing. A slow smile spreads over her face – in fact, they have only just come from a particularly passionate bout of lovemaking, but in this strange enchanted place they do not tire – not physically nor of each other._

_She appraises him, and her smile widens. "You'd look good with a beard."_

_"You think?" he asks without looking away from the mirror._

_"Yeah," she says. "Like a scoundrel. Like you're about to sweet talk me out of my virtue."_

_"Hm," he says mildly, but a grin teases his lips. "That doesn't sound like me at all."_

_"I think it reflects your character pretty well, actually."_

_He laughs and his hands shake, leaving a wobbly clean-shaven line on his cheek. "You know, I seem to recall that you had an equal hand in the stealing of your virtue."_

_She draws herself up in a pique of towering offense. "How dare you cast such aspersions on my character!" she blusters. "I have never been so sorely insulted in all my life!"_

_He's not done shaving, but he abandons his efforts to slide his hands slide over her belly and grasp her hips, and she watches the towel slung around his waist slip dangerously as he presses himself close. "How will I ever make it up to you?" he breathes against her neck._

_But because he has not finished shaving, his stubble tickles the tender skin there, and she shrieks with laughter, flailing in a half-hearted attempt to extricate herself from his embrace. "Stop! Stop, you monster! Oh my god!"_

_Far from put off, his grin acquires a predatory edge, and he nuzzles her with renewed fervor. "I am beside myself with contrition," he murmurs, trailing a burning line of kisses along her collarbone. "I hardly know what to do with myself."_

_And as he goes it becomes harder to remember why she needs to escape, what had happened only moments before; her spirited rebellion comes to nothing the moment he brushes his lips against hers. "Do you?" she gasps._

_More kissing – impossibly passionate, of such a degree that she can hardly breathe. "Sure," he breathes, his hands pressing her close, his burning palms flat against her bare skin, and the world seems to shiver._

_"You scoundrel," she manages before he kisses her again, and there is no more thought, only feeling; Kaidan, smelling like soap and spice, the patches of unshaven stubble raising gooseflesh as his cheek brushes her neck, and how impossibly soft his lips are, how impossibly perfect he is – far greater than the sum of his parts._

_It is much later when he pulls away – Shepard can see a band of weak light streaming from under the door, and she realizes the sun must have risen already. Kaidan notices it too, and smiling, he resumes his ministrations. "Seems like I can't even shave without you distracting me," he says in a tone that he clearly wants to be chastising, but the color in his face gives him away._

_"How is your complete lack of control my fault?" Shepard smirks. Her own cheeks are warm. She has half a mind to drag him back to bed, the city be damned. Unlike the first days of their vacation, now Shepard can't escape the realization that in ten days they will have to put on their uniforms and resume their lives as Commander and Lieutenant, and the thought fills her with a twinge of inexplicable panic. A half-remembered phrase fills her thoughts – make hay while the sun shines._

_"I guess it isn't," he says, equitable even now. "You know, you don't have to wait for me to finish."_

_"I don't mind," she says, swinging her legs in an attempt to siphon off the excess energy thrilling through her limbs. "I like to watch."_

_"Really?" he says, his tone suggestive._

_She quells him with a look. "Not like that, you pervert. I just mean … well, shaving is such a man thing, you know?"_

_"I do, actually."_

_She shoots him another irritated look. "You think you're funny, but you're really not."_

_"Ouch," he says, lips twitching against a grin._

_She sighs. "Come on, I'm serious! It's … well, think about it. When you're little, hanging out with your parents or whatever, you watch them do adult stuff when they get ready for the day, like shave or put on makeup, and it's so fascinating in your little kid brain – it's like watching this obscure ritual, and you know that when you're older you'll finally understand it."_

_His eyes soften. "I used to watch my dad shave. Back when it was like you said – inexplicable adult stuff."_

_"Right, exactly," she says, but her smile falters. "And … I don't know. I never really got the chance for it when I was a kid, because I never knew my dad. So it's interesting to see now – all this man stuff." She tries another smile. "Like you're a different creature altogether."_

_He appraises her through the mirror, his whiskey-colored eyes tender and thoughtful. "I had no idea the great Commander Shepard was such an innocent."_

_"I'm not," she huffs, embarrassed. "Please."_

_He shakes his head. "Not like that. I mean … there's all this stuff about growing up that I'd always taken for granted, and here you've haven't had a chance to experience any of it."_

_She kicks her legs out, feeling small and stupid for having said anything. At the moment, it seems as if the look of pity in his eyes is an attack – at her life, her formative years, at the job her own mother had done raising her. Her mother, long dead – hardly able to defend herself. So it falls to Shepard. "It's not like you should pity me or anything," she mutters, defensive. "I was just making an observation."_

_Of course he understands – it is odd and thrilling and a little annoying that no matter what she says, he seems to know what she is thinking anyway. She wonders how he manages it. "I don't mean to attack your mom," he says quietly._

_"Good," she says tersely, sliding off the counter and straightening her towel to prevent any undue exposure, which a moment ago would have been more than all right, but now is too much intimacy for her mood. "She did all right by me. I was fed and clothed and cared for, just like any kid should be."_

_She stalks out of the bathroom less to escape the pity and understanding in his eyes, and more to escape the sudden shift in her mood, and the nagging sense that she has done a disserve to the woman who birthed her, raised her, and sacrificed untold ambitions to see that she grew up happy and healthy._

_It has always been complicated in Shepard's mind, even before Hannah Shepard was killed in the line of duty. Because in her most secret heart of hearts, despite the esteem in which she holds her mother, the awed and worshipful way she regards her career and abilities, and the warm memories that the woman herself inspires, there lurks a kernel of resentment that it was in her mother's power to provide her with a father – the one thing she'd wanted more than anything - and yet she never did. It does not help that the last words Shepard ever said to her mother was a sharp accusation along these lines– regardless of whether it was true or not._

_She's brooding when she feels Kaidan approach behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, resting his head on top of hers, and unlike moments ago in the bathroom, here his touch is comforting. After a moment of stiff rebellion she sighs, leaning into him._

_"I'm sorry," he murmurs._

_"Don't be. I overreacted."_

_He's quiet for a moment, and she knows he's searching for a diplomatic response. "Even if you did, it was still thoughtless of me to say."_

_Despite herself, she grins. "Ah, don't worry about it. I'm used to Alenko-Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome."_

_"Hey!"_

_She pinches him. "Don't 'hey' me. I'm not even the one who came up with it."_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Yeah. It was "Ashley's idea."_

_They fall silent, remembering. It is a common condition for career soldiers, to be constantly surrounded by those who have been killed in action, to be reminded of them in tender and quiet places, until the loss of them nearly takes you off guard. His arms grow tighter around her waist, and she knows he is thinking that they could lose each other in just the same way as those other, lost soldiers. She knows this because she is thinking it herself._

_Because it is early still and there are no duties to perform, no ship to see to, no orders to obey, they climb back into their rumpled bed. She folds herself in his arms and listens to his heartbeat, that steady music that pulses and resonates, that soothes. He strokes her hair absently, curling the fine strands around his finger before shaking them loose, and she smiles._

_"What are you thinking?" he asks after a long while._

_She presses her palms flat against his chest, just above his heart, savoring the feel. "How your heartbeat is the best sound in the world. Don't you think?"_

_"My heartbeat? Or heartbeats in general?"_

_"In general."_

_He considers. "I don't know. Honestly, I've always been partial to the sound of breathing. Yours, especially."_

_"My breathing?" For a moment she is taken aback. It's a similar answer to hers, but different enough to make him fascinating and dear._

_"Sure. Even when you snore."_

_She elbows him in the side. "I don't snore."_

_"All right," he amends, laughing._

_"Anyways," she says. "I was thinking that you were kind of right."_

_"About?"_

_"About my childhood," she shrugs, embarrassed. "There are a lot of normal kid things I never really got a chance to do. But you know, there are probably a lot of really common things for me that you never got a chance to do, either."_

_"Like what?"_

_"Like the fact that my house was a spaceship," she says, grinning. "How many kids alive would kill to have a spaceship house, you think?"_

_"At least a fair few," he says._

_"At the least! And if you think about it, most kids have to watch movies or cartoons to get a load of heroes, but I was lucky enough to have a ship full of them. My own mom was one – I swear, you should have seen how she got on a mission. Standing stock straight, like she was made of steel. I would have to look at her twice just to remember she was my mom."_

_"Sounds familiar," Kaidan says, smiling down at her._

_"Ha! Not even close, but it's nice of you to say so."_

_He doesn't say anything for a moment, only looks at her strangely – half pity, have amazement. "You know, you don't see yourself very clearly at all."_

_She's a little nettled by this observation. "Maybe it's you who doesn't see me clearly."_

_He would normally let this go without comment, but her self-deprecation seems to annoy him. "How is it easier for you to believe there's something wrong with the way I see you than it is for you to believe that you're beautiful and outstanding and more skilled than anyone I've met in my life?"_

_She shifts, uncomfortable. "Doesn't it make sense to see a person you care about as better than they are?"_

_She's got him there. He falls silent, his fingers no longer curling in her hair. "Someday you're going to have to contend with the fact that you're exceptional. You won't be able to shrug it off as bias on my part," he tells her, stern._

_"Someday, maybe," she smirks. "Not today."_

_Kaidan is not impressed. "Hmph."_

_"You know, it's funny that you're able to talk about me like I'm some self-deprecating jerk, meanwhile you've yet to accept a compliment from me without grumbling that I've got it wrong."_

_"Then I guess it's good we've found each other, isn't it?" he fires back, caught halfway between amusement and annoyance. "Since we're able to see through each other's bullshit."_

_"Exactly," she says, craning up to kiss him. He makes a fine show of grumbling irritation, but he can only hold out for so long against her lips, and after a moment he softens into the kiss, his hand pushing back her loose hair to reflexively cup her face._

_They are quiet for a long while, he savoring her breathing, she his heartbeat. She watches the light slowly grow more subdued – not from dusk but from a spring storm. The clouds churn on the horizon beyond their window, slate grey and thick with rain, yet far from thinking them ominous, she is oddly comforted by the splatter of raindrops on the windows, the sound of it like a rushing river._

_But at one point, she becomes aware that Kaidan has grown tense – the muscles in his shoulders and neck are stark against his skin – and his hands move frenetically on the rumpled sheets. "What's wrong?" she asks him, craning to look up at him._

_"Nothing," he says immediately._

_"You know I'm not dumb enough to believe that."_

_His eyes flash to hers. "Why is it you're only confident in yourself when it suits you?"_

_"Because it suits me," she replies, grinning. "Out with it."_

_He is quiet, and she can clearly see in his eyes that he is shuffling his thoughts into an agreeable form, perhaps to keep from scaring her. His reticence fills her with a small flash of fear, one that she doesn't understand and can't effectively rationalize. "I was just thinking … because we were talking about your mom. Our parents."_

_"Thinking about …?" she prompts, but a part of her already knows. She feels a pit forming in her gut, and her hands grow cold._

_"About kids."_

_She appreciates that he cares enough about her to be honest, even though admitting it seems to have taken a considerable degree of courage. Regardless, the pit of fear in her gut deepens, freezes. She feels herself unconsciously drawing away. For the first time in days, she needs to carve some open space between them. "Kids?" she hears herself ask._

_"Yeah," he says. "You were talking about your mom, how you remember seeing her on the bridge of her ship like some kind of action hero, and I was just thinking about how it would be the same with your own kid."_

_"Is this your kid too?" she asks without thinking._

_He colors slightly, and if she hadn't been in the middle of holding off a fight or flight reaction she might have found it equal parts alluring and adorable. "I wasn't going to make that presumption," he mutters._

_This is the first time they've talked about the future – the many iterations of it, shifting like a kaleidoscope behind her eyes, taking on some new, fantastic form for every second that they are together. And it isn't as if Shepard hasn't thought about it herself; one moment they are together on the bridge of the Normandy, the next in some dark alley, the next in the heated breath of battle, back to back, the flash of gunfire around them. In the privacy of her thoughts she had allowed herself these fantasies – that no matter what the future held for them, they would face it together. Maybe it would seem childish to an outward observer, but she knows that what they have between them is different. She knows that they've only been together for days, and already she knows him better than anyone._

_But as he looks at her, his whiskey-brown eyes darkening with shame the longer she goes without speaking, she realizes that the future had taken a different shape for him. Where she sees lifelong service to the Alliance, he sees children and family. Of course he does. She knows without question that he'd be a fantastic father, better than most. The thought is somehow tender._

_"Kaidan," she says slowly, cursing the heat that rises in her face. "I – I probably should have said something. I … I don't think I'll ever have kids."_

_He is quiet, and she is thankful that he is giving her the space to put her tangled thoughts into words._

_"It's not that I can't, at least not that I know of. And it's not that I – well, honestly, I don't think I would be a very good parent."_

_"More self-deprecation?" he asks, keeping his tone mild._

_"No," she says quickly. "Not that I expect that will convince you. But when I think about the things I'm good at, nurturing doesn't really rank high on them. I'm a soldier – a good one. Fine," she says, noticing his expression, "a really good one. And I'm sure there are good soldiers that are good moms, but they probably have those other essential skills that you need to have to be a good mom."_

_"Like?" he prompts._

_"Like they have to have their heads on straight, for one, and I know for a fact that I don't. I think that's a pretty important consideration. They need to be … they need to be able to give their kids what they need, and I know I can't do that. I can hardly care for myself, let alone a tiny delicate creature that is one hundred percent dependent on me to survive. Not only are they responsible for a baby, but they're responsible for essentially shaping their kid into a person – the slightest mistakes are potentially devastating to a kid. And I mean …" she trails off, inexplicably moved to honesty by the look on his face, "I mean, maybe if I was a different person I'd be okay with it. I'd … I'd even want to. If I was different or better. But I know I'm not and never will be."_

_He's quiet. "You would … if you were different or better?"_

_"I guess, yes," she says, edging away. "I don't know how else to explain it."_

_To her horror, the expression on his face slowly shifts from equitable interest to frustration, or perhaps even anger –the lines at the corner of his mouth deepen, and his brows are low over eyes that simmer. Now she fully extricates herself, drawing her arms around her legs in an unconsciously defensive gesture. "I'm sorry if you're disappointed, but there's no reason to be angry at me," she snaps._

_"I'm – what? I'm not angry at you," he says, incredulous. "I know you hate hearing this, but I hope that one day you're able to see yourself the way you are, rather than the way you've convinced yourself you are."_

_"What is that supposed to mean?"_

_"I mean that you really don't see yourself clearly at all! I don't understand it, Shepard. You're so completely convinced that you're a disaster, to the point where you deny yourself things that you want or need because you don't think you'll be able to do them right. Well, you won't be able to if you never stop cutting yourself down before you're even out of the gate."_

_"Really?" she snaps. "Where the hell do you get off, Alenko? You don't know anything about me. You don't know what I can and can't do. I'm sorry that my self-appraisal offends you so much, but it's not your business; it's mine."_

_"That's not what I meant," Kaidan says, his hands going tight. He is ridiculous and handsome and irritating, wrapped only in bedsheets, his hair slightly mused, and she hates that despite the stupid things he is saying, there is still an elemental part of her that finds him hopelessly attractive._

_She lurches to her feet, temper curling in her limbs, making her palms itch. "I don't understand why you care so much," she retorts. "What difference does it make?"_

_Perhaps in another place he would have placated her, anything to smooth the argument, but rare temper snaps in his eyes. "It makes a difference because I care about you!" he says with such heat that for a moment she sees the passionate boy standing up to something he knows is wrong, the blazing heart of him that burns beneath his level exterior. She is terrified and awed by it._

_Her head spins. She doesn't know what to say to this, only that he has to get away from him. She yanks a shirt over her head and settles her fatigues over her hips. "I'm going out," she says, jerkily lacing her boots and cramming her wallet into her pocket. "Don't follow."_

_And to his everlasting credit, he does not._

* * *

The hours passed, and Shepard did not move. She watched the children on the playground with a distant reserve, unflinching even when their shrieks of joy brought a lecture from their attending parents and keepers. She watched them, and let the wall crumble. She no longer attempted to ignore the truth, each cutting facet of it, more terrible than she'd once thought she could bear.

It gave her no comfort to see that she was alive to bear it. It was no relief to continue, knowing what she knew.

Their argument of so many years ago haunted her now. She could see Kaidan as he was then – young, without any circles under his eyes, even-tempered until the absolute breaking point, where he would come alive with passion that made her weak. And she saw him as he would have been today – a little greyer, a little more scarred. But the burn of his eyes would be the same. He would sit beside her wheelchair and take her hand, hold it tightly, insisting to his last breath that she could do this, that she could be a mother, and a better one than most, that she was infinitely more skilled and worthwhile than she'd ever thought possible.

What good did it do to think of him as he would have been? He was dead. He and the rest of the Normandy's crew – Garrus, Tali, James, Steve, Javik, Joker, Liara; her friends and crew, all gone. She would never see any of them again.

Loss rose in her throat, thick and choking, and tears burned at her eyes. A dim part of her marveled – she hadn't thought she'd have any left to cry.

Something hard struck her in the check, and she watched as a small plastic ship tumbled into her lap. A sob nearly escaped when she saw that the ship was none other than a model version of the Normandy SR-2. An errant thought forced itself into her mind just as violently as the toy ship that had struck her head – this was probably the only way the Normandy existed now, forever immortalized as a toy, as plastic. To think of her home blasted to ash, and everyone she loved along with it, was suddenly too much to bear.

"Oh my god, are you all right?" said a woman, rushing to her side. "I am so sorry, I took my eyes off him for just a moment, and – I am so so sorry."

Shepard belatedly realized the strength of the woman's reaction had mostly to do with the fact that she was sobbing again, and she knew that she struck a very pathetic, tragic picture in her wheelchair, with her shorn hair poking in sad little spikes from under the brim of her cap, her badly broken bones, her blue toes. She cried even harder.

"Please ma'am, are you hurt?" the woman said, panicking, her little boy hovering nervously behind her, watching Shepard with the guileless eyes of the young.

"N-no," Shepard choked. "I'm sorry. I'm fine. No harm done."

But that wasn't true, was it? Shepard wrapped her arms around her waist and curled onto herself, swallowing the hysterical sobs building endlessly in her chest, sobs that struggled to be free.

At a loss, the woman rounded on her son. "Benny, we don't behave like wild animals! Apologize to the lady right now!" she said, her hands on her hips.

The little boy could not have been more than four, but he looked up at Shepard with wide eyes, and she was struck by the color – not quite the color of Kaidan's, but close enough to cut at her already breaking heart. "Sorry," said the boy before looking down at his scuffed shoes again.

The woman took her son firmly by the hand. "Again, I'm very sorry ma'am," she said. "Are you sure you're not hurt?"

Shepard swallowed, swiped her raw eyes with a shaking fist. "Yes, I'm fine. Here," she said, holding out the toy Normandy. "Don't forget his toy." A valiant attempt at a smile, but it trembled at the corners, faltering as her fingers brushed the smooth surface of the ship she had called her own, the ship that had carried those she loved.

"Thank you," said the woman, and she offered Shepard a tentative smile. "Have a good day." With that, she sped off toward the parking lot, her son trailing behind, glancing over his shoulder at the sad lady in the wheelchair.

Abruptly Shepard was furious with herself. So she was pregnant with her dead lover's child. So her home and friends were gone. She knew how to survive this – maybe not the pregnant part, but it had been pretty much same when her mother had been killed. She'd survived. Kind of.

But regardless, her situation would not improve if she continued to sit at the side of a playground and weep. She was Shepard. Maybe she was busted and broken, but at her heart she was still a survivor – more than anything else, she was a survivor. She would live through this – no matter what happened now, she would survive it.

Shepard remained with her arms curled around her waist for a long time, watching the sun reflect on the surface of English Bay, and though the light grew too strong she did not look away. She was consumed by thought, by the realization she had avoided for so long. But now, she was forced to contend with it, for even now, beneath her skin, nestled below her heart, Kaidan's child slept. Their child.

He was dead. Nothing would change that. And she knew that her aversion to motherhood should not have changed. If she was smart, she would end her pregnancy and spare the child the misery it would know in life, with only a sad bitter woman to call family. She knew that she was not suited to being a mother at all – she was too unstable, too unreliable, too broken.

And yet … and yet.

She remembered pictures of first trimester babies that she'd come upon during the course of her education. They looked more like fish than infants – with their tiny, bean shaped bodies, the translucent membrane that passed for skin, their beady black eyes. She knew these things logically, and yet when she thought of the child growing in her, she thought of it as fully realized already. It was an infant, and a toddler, and an adult grown; all of these things simultaneously - far greater than the sum of its parts, far more realized than the limit of time.

There was the realization that this child was a child – was  _real._ Less a whisper and more a shout, of pain or joy. or both. But there was a second, more painful realization; that this child was all that remained of Kaidan.

She thought of a different life, then; what it would be like if there had been no Reapers or war, if they were as normal as any two random civilians, unburdened and desperately in love. She thought of missing her period, pacing while the pregnancy test developed on the bathroom counter, and those two pink lines telling her what she already seemed to know deep in her bones. She thought of what it would be like to tell Kaidan – though it hurt far worse than being broken by the explosion atop the Citadel she thought of his face. He would be stunned – hadn't they used birth control? – but seeing her reaction, he would smile and laugh, and maybe there would be tears in his eyes, and he would sweep her up in his arms and swing her around, just like in the movies. Or maybe he'd do nothing but hold her hand while she cried, spluttering about how weirdly scared and happy she was, how crazy it was that already she could see herself as a parent, and at the same time she could see herself royally fucking this whole parenthood thing up, and only after she'd exhausted herself would he fold her gently in his arms.

How would he even feel about this? He had his own problems with parenthood. He'd wanted a family, she remembered, but beneath everything he'd worried that he'd be just as undemonstrative as his own father. Though she found the idea ridiculous to the point of farce, he'd worried that he'd be insufficient. She'd seen him exactly as he was – steady, trustworthy, solid, and still more passionate and idealistic than anyone she'd known – and known in her bones that there'd be no better father alive. That their child would have been lucky to know him.

Would have been. Tears pricked at her eyes again, and she wiped them away with a trembling hand. She knew that pain all too well. She knew what it was like to slowly learn that your family was incomplete, that your mother – though she did her best – was compensating for something long lost. As a child she'd been full of resentment that burned the longer she went without answers, never mind the fact that they were answers her mother could not provide.

She could not bear the thought of her own child resenting her for the absence of Kaidan.

And even so – even knowing fully well what she would curse this child with on the moment of its birth, she could not bring herself to consider anything other than keeping it – her little bean, already fully realized, already so desperately needed.

It was nearly dusk when she felt a light hand on her shoulder. She could think of only a handful of people who could recognize her in her current state, and even fewer who would have the courage to touch her with so much solicitude, so much tenderness. She craned up into the eyes of Admiral Hackett, and abruptly her eyes stung with tears. She was not surprised that he'd been the one to find her – in fact, there was a small part of her that had expected it.

"Admiral," she said, lifting her hand into a shameful salute.

"Sam," he said gently, far more gently than she deserved. She did not begrudge him the use of her first name, her real name, and now - even after every awful thing she had said and done, after her recklessly stupid escape from the hospital - he did not begrudge her grief. He took her hand, and she gripped his just as tightly, and there they remained for a long while.

* * *

_Shepard is gone for a long time. When she finally returns to their hotel room, she sees Kaidan sitting at the desk, working quietly. He looks up when he hears the door, and she is abruptly so filled with guilt that she can hardly meet his eyes._

_"I'm sorry," she says, watching her feet._

_"I am too," he says quietly._

_He does not force reconciliation, and it is only after she tentatively folds herself in his arms that he grips her tightly, his face buried in her hair, which is damp from the rain. She doesn't say that he is right, and that she is right too – that she is hard on herself and she is not fit to be a parent, and she wouldn't know the first thing about it anyway. But she does say this: "If I ended up having kids, I'd want to have them with you."_

_He says nothing, only holds her more tightly, as if he can't bring himself to let her go._


	10. Chapter 10

A whistle sounded, and Jack got to her feet. She eased into the instinctual stance – feet wide apart, shoulders up, hands raised – and lit the biotics in her blood as the foreman called " _LIFT!"_ At his command, she and a half-dozen other biotics raised a steel beam high, guiding it in place onto the skeleton of the new building they labored over.

It was precision and endurance work, which was not exactly Jack's forte. She was better at quick displays of unimaginable power, sending the force of a freight train slamming into one smirking point. But now, her work required a constant awareness of her surroundings, and of the construction workers on the scaffold above, not to mention an exact coordination with the other six biotics lifting at her side. One overzealous movement would send the beam crashing into the workers, knocking them to the ground, and if they faltered before it was properly secure it would rip from its newly minted supports, gutting the building like a fish under a paring knife. But it was a challenge, and right now what Jack needed more than anything was a challenge.

She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the weight of the beam, the space it occupied, the envelope of gravity that cradled it. A bead of sweat trickled down her cheek, sliding down her neck, pooling at her collarbone, and more than anything she itched to swipe it away. But she could not move. For the next ten minutes, she would have to hold this beam exactly in place as the workers welded it to the frame of the building.

Following Shepard's disastrous bombshell at the hospital, Jack had been avoiding her. At first, she'd done what she always did in situations like this: She spent three days hiding, pacing grooves into her apartment, shoving down the impulse to run the fuck away, to hide someplace where they didn't have babies or pregnancy, where the whole institution was soundly ignored. Someplace with a skeevy bar and unlimited booze, and the requisite salty patrons should the urge to fight arise.

Anything she tried to eat hit her stomach like a ton of bricks. Any attempts at sleep resulted in numbing hours spent staring at the ceiling, her hands bouncing on the stiff mattress, fingers twitching in time with her frantic thoughts. She'd vaulted up and paced the room before perching on the windowsill, where the Vancouver night beckoned to her. She comforted herself by smoking her weight in cigarettes. She peered out at the skyline through a haze of smoke, and the distance came as a relief. From her vantage point, she could almost convince herself she was high above the world, viewing its grotesqueries from many light years away.

Faced with a surplus of free time and a constant impulse to get the fuck out of her apartment, Jack decided to find work. Hackett assured her that once things leveled out he would resume the various biotic instruction programs that the Alliance funded, and at that point he'd need her skills as a teacher, but at the time it wasn't a logical allocation of resources. Jack had accepted this with a shrug. Before, she might have kicked up a fuss, but after everything it almost came as a relief to be let off the hook for the foreseeable future.

What else was she supposed to do? She was a busted down broken mess of a person. For a normal sapient being, the news that the closest thing you had to a friend was suddenly pregnant would be something to celebrate. For someone like Miranda, probably. Jack could see it now. She'd get all dressed up and take Shepard out to a fancy restaurant, order something extravagant – no alcohol, of course,  _of course –_ and say something like how  _thrilled_ she was and how she'd be there for Shepard in whatever way Shepard needed.  _Of course._

Not Jack. She'd choked and run away. What the fuck did Jack know about pregnancy? She knew that it resulted in a baby, obviously. A child could say that much. Well, what the fuck did she know about  _babies?!_

That they cried a lot and ate a lot and slept a lot. That they were tiny and helpless. That she'd been one, once. At least theoretically.

Needless to say, Jack was fed up. With the situation, with herself. With her cowardice, the freakish conditioning in the form of that little voice always reminding her how the situation could go wrong, how she could be hurt or left behind. For once, she let herself think about what it was about Shepard's condition that bothered her so much.

She snorted. Condition. Like it was some kind of terminal illness. Well, now that she thought about it, 'condition' might be an apt description. Done right, Shepard was in it for life. She would be a parent, a  _mother,_ those so-called paragons of maternal instinct and care. And if, for some reason, Shepard turned out to be just as awful as the mothers she had experience with, Jack would have to come to terms with the fact that Shepard wasn't anything like she'd thought – that she was just as shitty as every other fucking degenerate coward that spawned and left their kids to die or worse.

So either way it boiled down, Shepard was leaving. Soon, she would be alone. No students, no Shepard. Nothing.

Jack closed her eyes hard, summoning geometric shapes that spun and spliced behind her eyelids. She was sick of her mind, sick of the places it went, the fears that wrapped themselves around her neck like a noose, slowly pulling tighter. She couldn't breathe. She was twelve again, clawing at her arms, at the walls, her head buried in her arms, hiding under a ramshackle desk and doing her best to stuff the tears down.

Logically, none of this should have been a problem. It wasn't like Shepard asked for this, or even had tried for it. She remembered Shepard's face when the doctor had told her that she was pregnant; stunned, so pale that she was almost colorless, transparent. She looked like she'd been stabbed in the gut, and considering the implications, this was not a ridiculous conclusion. It meant that Kaidan was gone, that he was probably dead, and either way she was saddled with this living, breathing reminder that he was gone and dead. It wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a person, but it sure was no fucking picnic either.

Jack watched the workers on the scaffold high above, welding the beam to the frame of the building. At this distance she could only see a suggestion of their hands – gloved, insulated by gloves to protect against burns and scrapes – but the light of the torches glinted off their visors, visible even by the sunset. By this point, her arms shook and her head ached, and the back of her shirt was soaked with sweat, but she grit her teeth and bore down.

At her side, one of the biotics fell out of line and sunk to the ground, holding his brow. "Smith!" she hissed at him, reaching out and securing the part of the beam he'd been responsible for. The added weight sent a burst of pain through her own head, but she did not let go. She would hold this beam alone until the next whistle sounded.

When it did, she swiped her brow with the back of her hand and let her stiff arms drop to her sides. Her eyes were heavy, and each step to the bench took every bit of energy she could summon. That was the good part about working with the Reconstruction Initiative – every night, she was completely exhausted. She'd open the door, take off her sweaty clothes, and fall into bed. Sleep usually came instantly, and her dreams were untroubled.

Smith plunked down next to her on the bench. "Thanks, Nought," he said, rubbing his temples. "Still pretty new at this."

"No shit," Jack said, and she took a huge bite of her sandwich, hoping the guy would get the idea and leave her alone. But he merely popped off the lid of his juice and took a hearty swig, downing the whole bottle in one go. Against her will, she was impressed; that biotic juice was thick as hell and tasted like ship fuel.

"Gotta say, we've gotten twice as much work done since you joined up," Smith said as he wiped his mouth. "You're pretty good."

"Thanks," she said dryly. 'Pretty good' was an understatement, and they both knew it. "Don't know how you got anything done without me. Who covered your busted ass before I showed up?"

He wasn't put off; if anything, he seemed to like the barb. "For your information, I handled myself all right before you deigned to grace us with your presence, hot shot."

"Talk is cheap, Smith. I need to see it to believe it."

And he laughed – laughed, like they were friends and she was funny. She bit back a scowl.

"You got anything planned for tonight?" he asked, following her through the compound and tossing his empty bottle in a trash bin.

"Yeah. Sleep," she fired back, uneasy. For some reason, barbed retorts did not keep strangers at bay as well as screamed challenges and open violence – if she was functionally polite to anyone, they got the wrong idea. Which was the last thing she wanted.

"You could come along for drinks with me, if you want," Smith said easily. "I know a great place. Brand new. I helped build it."

"Is that supposed to impress me?"

He laughed again. "I've seen what you can do. I don't have any illusions on where I rank next to you, Nought."

Normally, she'd immediately say no, without even considering the person or the offer. But for some reason, the gut-chewing loneliness she'd been cultivating lately circumvented this typical response. For the first time in her life, she found herself considering his offer. Drinks sounded nice. Company sounded tolerable.

"Why the fuck not," she shrugged. "I'm warning you right now, if this is some ill-conceived prelude to seduction, go ahead and fuck right off."

Smith held up his hands, smirking. "I wouldn't dream of any ill-conceived preludes with you."

So they went out for drinks, Jack tagging along like it was the most natural thing in the world – just some shmuck out with a coworker, knocking back a few after a rough shift. It was so normal that it became surreal. The bar  _was_ nice, brand-new and packed to the gills with two hundred people who had gotten the same idea. Given that Vancouver was only about half-rebuilt, Jack figured there weren't that many watering holes to slam a couple drinks before heading in for the night. A few walls were exposed, and some of the harder liquor had the distinct bathtub distilled flavor she'd gotten real familiar with on Omega. But overall, it was tolerable. She didn't drink too much. She listened to Smith talk about his experience with the war – biotic support for a tech firm that had managed to survive Earth's destruction– and deflected his questions with sarcasm.

But it wasn't the same. She couldn't help looking at him like she looked at all strangers – possessing the capacity for betrayal and hurt, though reconciling darker intent with his open face was difficult. It wasn't the same as knocking a few back with Shepard, who could drink a krogan under the table and still walk updeck to her quarters without crashing into various ship fixtures. Shepard, who wasn't like your regular garden variety asshole, who was probably heartsick all alone in her hospital room, unable to walk or move or do anything she'd done before. Jack knew how she'd handle a situation like that – go crazy, try to escape – and suddenly the feeling that she'd abandoned the only person she felt comfortable calling a friend in the galaxy made her gut twist.

In hindsight, she probably should have known.

"I'm going to head out," she said after a while. "I'm dead on my feet."

"Fair enough," said Smith. "Want to split a cab?"

She shook her head. "Gonna walk home. See you tomorrow."

And she would have. She would have trudged home in the dark, feeling lonely and unworthy and stupid had she not caught sight of the TV over the bar, currently set to the news. She couldn't hear jack shit, but the scrolling text beneath the headline flashed a bolded headline, one that made her gut drop to the floor.

**COMMANDER SHEPARD MISSING**

She moved as if through a haze, shoving aside people at the bar to get a closer look. The newscaster disappeared, replaced by footage of Shepard's hospital room – the IV tied up, blankets hanging off the side of the bed, an almost invisible trail of blood on the floor, smearing to a point in the corner, where it disappeared.

Fuck it – there had probably been some unconscious part of her brain that expected this. Going by all she knew of Shepard, all she knew of herself, and all she knew of the shitheads in the world, there had been every indication in the world that something would happen to Shepard. Probability wasn't even involved in the equation; this event had operated on a matter of certainty. And Jack should have seen it.

She would have, had she not been so wrapped up in her own stupid bullshit. Had she not been slinking around town like a kicked dog with its tail between its legs.

"Nought?" Smith was saying at her side. "Everything all right?"

"What the fuck is this?" she said, jabbing her finger at the TV.

Smith's brows furrowed. "The Commander's missing," he said. "Been missing for a few days, now."

"A few days?!" Jack hissed.

"Well, yeah. Don't you watch the news?"

She'd been making a point to avoid the news lately, since it pissed her off. "I gotta go," she said, shoving through the crowd to the exit, cursing furiously to herself. She had to start looking now. Even half-rebuilt, Vancouver was huge, and that was assuming the fuckers that had taken her hadn't left her in a ditch somewhere in the burned out stretches of countryside, or worse, lifted her off-planet.

Either way, she was in for a long night.

* * *

Shepard and Hackett sat in silence for a long time. They were far enough away from the playground that no one noticed or bothered them again. Shepard thought the presence of the foremost admiral in the Alliance traipsing around civilian space might have caused a stir, but out of his uniform Hackett looked like any other older man: neatly pressed shirt and slacks, steel-grey hair wisping from under his implacable Alliance cap. He could have been a veteran, easily. That was how they must look to passers-by, she realized; an old veteran and his junkie cripple.

She wondered how he would break the silence. The longer it went, the more difficult it became for her to speak. Her throat was tight with unshed tears, and her hands shook in her lap. She was forced to stare her foolish escape in the face, sitting at the side of the closest thing she had to family anymore, and the shame of it had welded her lips shut.

"What do you say we get something to eat before I take you back?" Hackett said finally, and she almost sobbed in relief. It had a long time since that burger at Admiral Angus'. She nodded gratefully.

He wheeled her to a car waiting on the curb and opened the passenger-side door. To his credit, he waited for her to figure out whether she had the strength to lift herself in the car instead of hauling her around without being asked. At her small, shamed nod, he gently lifted her out of the wheelchair and into the car. She saw his brows quirk low, and another wave of shame washed over her. While he folded the wheelchair and packed it in the truck, she buckled her seatbelt and tried not to betray how miserable she felt.

"Sorry I wasn't able to get a van," Hackett said when he returned, buckling himself in and starting the car. "Had to procure this on short notice."

More shame, enough to drown in. She wondered how she could still breathe. "It's fine," she muttered.

The drove through the outskirts of Vancouver, as the newly constructed downtown was still too congested for through-traffic. She watched the scenery flash by window – newly budded trees, fresh-paved streets, English Bay catching dying bits of light and throwing them outward, so that when she closed her eyes it seemed as if the world burned through her eyelids. It was warm in the car, and safe. The motions of the car lulled her, and the sound of it was almost like the Normandy during sleep cycle, humming just under all other noise, comforting as a steady pulse. She lay one hand on her stomach and let herself drift, stirring circles there with her thumb.

Hackett parked at a takeout place, boasting 'REAL GROWN FOOD!' It was a reference to the synthetic nourishment most people were forced to eat these days, considering it was too soon for most of Earth's newly seeded farmland or ranches to bear any harvest. The sign made Shepard mildly suspicious – probably nothing more than a sales pitch. But Hackett almost smiled. "Grown or not, it's pretty good."

"I'll take your word for it," she said, reaching for the door.

He held up his hands. "Stay put. I'll bring some back."

"I can manage," she argued.

"I know," he said gently, and she scowled. "Just would rather not have anyone recognize you at the moment."

"No one has so far. Except you."

He shook his head. "Not really sure how you managed that, either. Every Alliance soldier on Earth is looking for you, not to mention the local law enforcement."

"Come on," she snapped. "I don't look anything like the service portrait they plastered all over the news."

"Yes, you do," he said, and she hated that seemed to hear the unspoken fear in her voice, well enough that he was able to respond to it. He slid out of the car and slammed the door, and she was left alone, chewing a hole in her lower lip and trying not to think about anything.

It didn't take him long to come back, this time with a brown bag cradled under his arm. He passed it to Shepard with a grin. "I remember how much you like cheeseburgers."

She bit down on her lip harder, because the fact that he remembered at all hurt, and any emotion she felt was now inexplicably linked to tears. "My nurses probably won't appreciate it."

"I expect they'll have enough to contend with."

More shame. She swallowed, hugging the bag of food closer to her chest. Grown or not, it did smell pretty good.

He drove a ways further out and parked the car on the side of the road. Westward was a perfect view of the coast, with rebuilt Vancouver dominating the distant skyline. Reconstruction hadn't begun this far on the outskirts, though; wreckage dotted the landscape, busted ships and ground transports littered the side of the roads, and further east she could see long stretches of burned-out land. But despite the destruction, she was close enough to see hopeful blades of grass peeking through the wreckage, and buds on the trees that had managed to survive.

"Never thought I'd see grass again," Hackett said, almost to himself. "But it's nice that things keep growing, even after everything."

It was almost like he knew. She crossed her arms tighter over her stomach, as if it could shield herself from his understanding.

"Pass me one of those, would you?"

She acquiesced, holding the bag open for him. He fished out a burger and unwrapped it neatly, taking a bite. He ate like he did everything; put together, slow and deliberate. It was something she'd noticed about him even when she was a toddler, supposedly too young to notice such things. She'd always liked that about him, but today it made her feel sloppy and foolish.

"So," he said. "Business, or personal?"

She was biting her lip so hard that she could taste the blood on her tongue, and her eyes swam with tears. Even now, even after all she'd done, he was proceeding just as they always had, ever since she'd been inducted into the service; he was allowing her to set the tone of their conversation – as Commander and Admiral, or as the closest thing to family she still had. She could say 'business' and he would let her, and they would talk about the reconstruction, the frustratingly slow progress of the Mass Relay repairs, the riots happening further south. He'd answer her questions, and perhaps even let her set a date marking her official return to service. He was letting her choose to pretend this had never happened.

She knew she did not deserve such consideration. She knew she'd rather swallow hot tar than admit any of what was going on with her, what had driven her to do something so stupid and reckless and hurtful, what nettled at her with increasing desperation. "Personal," she said, wiping at her eyes with a trembling hand. "I'm sorry."

Hackett drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "You worried a lot of people, Sam."

"Yeah," she said, her voice small. She thought about Jack when she caught the news. If she was lucky, she'd miss the whole thing in her quest to avoid the outside world, and never know that Shepard had gone missing. But it was more likely that Jack had found out the moment she'd gone missing, and that she'd spent the last few days looking without food or sleep. Just like when she'd been broken on the Citadel, close enough to death that she hadn't seen an out. The thought of Jack's furious face brought on a wave of guilt so acute that it nearly stole her breath. She had no idea how she'd make this up to her.

Hackett let out a long sigh. "You figure out what you're going to say when you go back?"

"The truth," she said, swallowing. "I'll deserve it if this destroys my public image."

To her surprise, Hackett smiled. "I doubt it'd do that."

"What?"

"As soon as you show up, all those people you ran into are going to figure out it was you and come forward. That woman you saved, especially."

"How do you know about that?" she asked. "I was gone before the cops showed up."

He gave her a look, and after a moment she let it go. It was a pretty dumb question. He was Hackett. He knew everything.

"Anyway. People are going to think you broke out to do your thing."

"Which is what, exactly?"

He shook his head, like she should have known the answer to this herself. "Help people."

"I wasn't thinking about other people," she cut in. "Not at first. I just … needed to get out."

He was quiet for a long moment. "Why?"

Her answer was an avalanche; they only ever start with a tiny pebble, a chunk of snow the size of a penny dislodging from its spot on the side of a mountain, and then before you know it you're swimming in enough snow to drown in. And that was the thing about her avalanche truth – once the smallest kernel of it broke free, the rest could only follow.

"I fucking hate that hospital," she said before she'd gotten a hold on her answer and considered that maybe it wouldn't be appropriate to swear in front of him. "I hate being strapped down, being fed and bathed like an invalid. I hate not being able to take care of myself, do the things that I know I'm good at. I'm tired all the time. Everything hurts. They won't say so, but the longer I'm there the more I think that I'll never be able to walk again, or maybe I'll be able to walk but I won't be able to run, or shoot my gun or do the only things that I know. That I won't be able to be a soldier anymore.

"Every night, I see the Reapers and Saren, and the Illusive Man. I see everyone that died, everyone that I couldn't save. I have nightmares so awful I wake up and I can't breathe. I can't do anything but just lie there and wait for the nurses to find me.

Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn't wipe them away this time. "I've got a crew out there, people that were with me from the beginning, people who believed me when the Council was still telling me not to believe Saren's silly lies. I don't know where they are, and I don't even know if they're alive. All I know is that I'm not there for them. I never came back. And I know I'm not supposed to think like this, but I can't help feeling like they're already dead and any hope is lip-service. 'You don't know that they're dead', right? Except it'll never be as easy as knowing. Maybe it's going to be years and years of people telling me not to give up hope, because the Normandy will come home, it has to. Maybe I'll go the rest of my life hearing it, and instead I'll know that I lost my friends and crew the day we defeated the Reapers. And –"

She'd almost said it out loud.  _I'm pregnant. The father is Kaidan, and he's probably dead. I've got to decide whether I want to keep his child or not. Yeah, about those regs._ Before she could say anything incriminating, she mashed her lips shut, biting back a sob so large that it rippled through her.

Hackett was quiet for a long time, weighing her outburst and his response, staring out at the bay like she'd seen him at the bridge of his ship; thoughtful, measured, calm. And despite herself, despite everything, his presence alone was a comfort.

Finally, he spoke. "You know what I'm going to say, don't you."

"Yeah," she said, wiping her eyes.

"I'm going to say it anyway, since you don't believe it," he said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel again. "It's only been a few months. We're still figuring out the relays. Assuming that every relay in the galaxy is on the fritz, that means that the Normandy's going to have to head home using FTL. That's twenty-two light years a day, give or take a few hours for core discharge." He paused for a moment. "Depending on where they were then the blast hit, it could take them a few months to get home … or it could take a few years."

"Years," she repeated, heartsick.

"But you got a good crew, Shepard. You should have faith in them."

"I do have faith in them," she retorted, stung. "But they wouldn't be the first good crew to die alone in space, for no reason other than their time was up."

He was quiet, and she knew that he was remembering her mother, how she'd been killed by pirates on the fringes of space. How skill hadn't had anything to do with the outcome that day.

"I'm not going to tell you that what you're afraid of is impossible, because it isn't," Hackett said heavily. "And you're right. They wouldn't be the first good crew to die. But you need to believe they're going to come home."

"I thought you'd agree with me," she said. "You're a pragmatist. You know beaming hope and earnest wishes out into the void does exactly jack shit for the outcome."

"That's true," he said. "But it's not for them that you hold on to hope."

She didn't say anything. She couldn't, because if she opened her mouth she'd start crying again.

"You're in pain, and everything seems impossible. But just a few days ago, you decided that you were going to get out of that hospital, and you did it. You ripped the stitches on your leg when you pushed yourself out of bed, and your muscles have atrophied, but you dragged yourself across the floor into your wheelchair, and you gave the entire Alliance Memory Hospital staff the slip." He almost smiled. "No mean feat."

"It was a shitty thing to do to all those people," she muttered, swallowing.

"Regardless, you did it. No one is ever going to be able to tell me that you won't walk again, or that you won't be able to do exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life, Sam. Not even you."

"So chin up, soldier?" she choked, half-sobbing.

"That's right," he said. "It'll be all right. You watch."

She knew he was uncomfortable with displays of affection, even though she'd known him since she was a toddler and they were as good as family. But he squeezed her shoulder, and for the first time she felt like he might even be right; that maybe there was hope, and even if there wasn't she had to convince herself there was. For her crew, for the Normandy. For Kaidan, and their little bean.

Hackett's smile faded, and he looked as if he wrestled with a difficult thought, as if he didn't know the right words to give it shape. "If I know anything about Major Alenko," he said slowly, "I know he's not going to rest until he's come back to you with that ship intact."

And she realized that he knew. Something in the way he said it – the way he was careful to say Major Alenko instead of Kaidan, the way he looked at her out of the corner of his eye; careful, too careful. He knew.

"Yeah," she heard herself say. "We'll see."

**Author's Note:**

> AN: Those of you who follow me know that I started writing for the Mass Effect fandom exactly one year ago, and the first story I wrote was called Reunion. To thank you all for reading and supporting me during this incredible year, I decided to take it to the drawing board and give it a complete rewrite. I think my writing has improved in the last year, so I thought I would apply what I've learned to this story. It's probably the most important one, because it addresses the ending - the final chapter in the lives of these characters that we all love so much.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. Feel free to drop me a review and share your thoughts.


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